Its use is now more entrenched than ever.
But Auto-Tune proved to be the fad that just wouldn’t fade. Right from the start, it always felt like a gimmick, something forever on the brink of falling from public favor. Soon overtly Auto-Tuned vocals were cropping up all over the sonic landscape, in R&B and dancehall, pop, house, and even country. The song’s producers, Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling, tried to keep secret the source of their magic trick, even coming up with a cover story that identified the machine as a brand of vocoder pedal, that robotic-sounding analog-era effect widely used in disco and funk.
“Believe” was the first record where the effect drew attention to itself: The glow-and-flutter of Cher’s voice at key points in the song announced its own technological artifice-a blend of posthuman perfection and angelic transcendence ideal for the vague religiosity of the chorus, “Do you believe in life after love?” The pitch-correction technology Auto-Tune had been on the market for about a year before “Believe” hit the charts, but its previous appearances had been discreet, as its makers, Antares Audio Technologies, intended. And what we were really “leaving” was the 20th century. The song, of course, was Cher’s “ Believe,” a worldwide smash on its October 1998 release. That sparkly special effect reappeared in the next verse, but this time a robotic warble wobbled, “So sa-a-a-ad that you’re leaving.” The phrase “I can’t break through” turned crystalline, like the singer suddenly disappeared behind frosted glass. It happened exactly 36 seconds into the song-a glimpse of the shape of pop to come, a feel of the fabric of the future we now inhabit.
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