Autotune, a technology used to alter a singer’s voice, is an exceptionally prominent part of popular music. Popular singers frequently utilize varying degrees of autotune in both live performances and recorded tracks. Some artists such as Selena Gomez utilize autotune to mask the imperfections of their voice, while others like the electronic band Chromatics employ autotune in “These Streets will Never Look the Same” in order to convey a deeper thematic meaning. However, this software is still a particularly maligned one both within the music industry and among consumers of music. Perhaps the most common impression of autotune is that it not only dulls the voice it is applied to but is inherently dishonest. After all, the very function of autotune is to modify a performer’s original voice. Daft Punk’s “One More Time” is one such song that makes use of autotune. “One More Time” adopts a party anthem tone with energetic, party-inspired lyrics and robotic vocals performed by singer Romanthony. Perhaps most interestingly, the musicians/instrumentalists Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalte of Daft Punl implement autotune in such a manner that it is self-evident to listeners that the software is being utilized. The robotic vocals, courtesy of autotune, are reflected by the lyrics of the song. Daft Punk’s “One More Time” reapplies Alexander Weheliye’s notion of the “vocoder’s”, an autotune-like technology, inherent honesty in black popular music to popular music. Weheliye theorized that voice modulation technology was able to enhance R&B music while maintaining the honesty of the work, something Daft Punk’s use of autotune in“One More Time” manages to accomplish as well. “One More Time” also challenges music critic Neil McKenzie’s assertion that autotune is “anti-character”, highlighting Mckenzie’s ignorance of non-pitch correction related applications of autotune. In turn, Daft Punk’s work challenges the popular perception of autotune, demonstrating that autotune can not only be used to successfully enhance a musical work in a forthright fashion but provide an additional layer of substance to a vocal piece.
Daft Punk’s “One More Time” definitively counters the mainstream perception of autotune through its application of the software. For one, the French electronic music duo application of autotune to the vocal performance of singer Romanthony produces a distinct, robotic sound. In turn, the use of autotune is self-evident to listeners of the song thereby maintaining the integrity of the piece in contrast to the dishonesty associated with autotune. Additionally, the heavily autotuned vocals contribute to the party-like tone of the song. The vocal performance is noticeably muffled and sometimes inaudible, mimicking the drowning out of an individual’s voice in a crowded disco party-like setting. Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalte’s use of autotune also cleverly reflects and plays off of the lyrics of the song. The lines, “One more time we’re gonna celebrate, oh yeah all right don’t stop dancing” are repeated four times. The nearly identical delivery of the lines in each repetition invokes the robotic quality the autotune defines in the vocal performances.
Now, the notion that an application that technologically smoothes out the imperfections and unique pitches of the natural voice can produce a nuanced and layered product may seem somewhat paradoxical. However, Daft Punk chooses to utilize a performer’s voice much like another artist may utilize an instrument. In fact, in an interview with Remix magazine, Daft Punk’s Bangalter directly referred to Romanthony’s voice in “One More Time” as an “instrument” when describing his experience working on the song: “He has done a lot of different things and he always tries to innovate, which is what we like to do on our records. He never had his voice treated like an instrument like that.” The sound of the voice is modified by autotune producing a sound that the human voice is incapable of producing alone just as different notes of a piano are played to produce the desired sound. Such application of autotune contributes heavily to the tone of the overall work contrary to the notion that autotune inhibits the impact of a song.
Daft Punk’s work also serves to reapply scholar Alexander Weheliye’s concept of the vocoder’s inherent honesty in black popular music to the genre of pop music. The vocoder Weheliye refers to is another example of voice modulation technology in the same vein as autotune. Weheliye’s proposition regarding the vocoder is two-fold. First, Weheliye posits that the use of the vocoder in R&B music does not simply blunt the sound of a given singer, but rather evokes a sense of nostalgia and “warmth”. Interestingly, Weheliye labels the modified voice as “more human”: “The use of sonic technology forms a part of a tendency to valorize older and obsolete machinery of musical production because they sound “warmer” and more “human,” which is ironic given that vocoders make the human voice sound robotic…” (Weheliye, 513). Weheliye recognizes that vocoders and sonic technology have a significantly more complicated impact on the vocal performance of a particular song than the mainstream perception of similar technologies suggests. Weheliye asserts that the vocoder specifically alters a performance in such a way as to evoke feelings of “nostalgia” by replicating the sound of “obsolete machinery”. In turn, Weheliye suggests there is artistic merit in the utilization of sonic technology as the sounds of a “more technologically innocent time” produce a distinctly unique sound. Daft Punk’s “One More Time” seems to reapply this principle to the use of autotune in electronic music.
While autotune, like the vocoder, produces a robotic sound, unique variations in the use of the tool can produce a unique product. Where R&B songs modulate a vocal performance to harken back to a more beloved time to produce an emotionally resonant response, Daft Punk use autotune to Romanthony’s vocal performance to call back to a familiar party setting. Each aforementioned application of technology enhances the experience of the song, rather than the creation of a formulaic piece. Moreover, Weheliye also argues that the use of sonic technology in R&B music is inherently honest given technology’s tremendous influence on “mediated life”: “…these technologies…depict the “reality” of current technologically mediated life worlds” (Weheliye, 511). Weheliye contends that the ignorance of technology is dishonest given its inevitable presence is dishonest. “One More Time”, once again, reapplies Weheliye’s principle to contemporary popular music. Daft Punk’s utilization of autotune confronts and accepts the role of technology in music by ensuring that their application of autotune is obvious to listeners with a definitively robotic sounding vocal performance. This presents a stark contrast to songs that use autotune to discreetly mask an off-pitch voice. In turn, “One More Time” demonstrates that the use of autotune if done openly is not necessarily a dishonest practice.
While Daft Punk’s work reapplies Weliheye’s observations to an alternate genre, “One More Time” challenges music critic Neil McKenzie’s claim that autotune hurts a musical work by allowing it to lose its soul. McKenzie heralds the unique human quality of a performer’s natural voice. “The singer is the human connection with the song. It’s the soul and the heart, and it’s the thing you lose when you correct every possible defect. A lot of my favourite singers, like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, don’t have beautiful voices. They have character in their voice, and pitch correction is anti-character.” McKenzie seems to prioritize the flaws of the voice that are characteristic of the natural voice. And in turn, McKenzie argues that the pitch-correcting, smoothing, and robotic effects of auto-tune eliminate the natural inflections in a performer’s voice, blunting the overall product of the song. “One More Time”, though, directly challenges such a sentiment by calling attention to McKenzie’s lack of consideration for alternative applications of autotune. The practice of discrete pitch-correction employed by a number of major pop stars McKenzie refers to is markedly different from “One More Time’s” application of autotune.
One such pop star is Selena Gomez. Gomez’s “Love You Like A Love Song”, much like “One More Time”, relies heavily on autotune. However, Gomez employs autotune discretely, imitating a pitch-perfect human voice, while Daft Punk’s use of autotune is very evidently robotic and contributes to the theme of the work. In other words, Gomez’s work sounds much like a normal human voice, suggesting a perhaps dishonest intention to have the audience consider the corrected voice. A brief look at Gomez’s live performance of the aforementioned song further demonstrates the singer’s reliance on autotune. Where Gomez attempts to deceptively and dishonestly mask the weaknesses in her voice much like McKenzie describes, Daft Punk accepts the role of autotune and uses the software to enhance the song. In turn, “One More Time” definitively distinguishes itself from the work McKenzie refers to and defies the limited description McKenzie assigns to autotune. “One More Time” cleverly muffles the vocal performance to imitate a party environment to the shared robotic nature of the lyrics and the vocal performance. Such an artistic decision makes use of autotune in order to further enhance the atmosphere and tone of a party that the artists hoped to elicit with the song, adding “character” to the work as opposed to blunting the “human connection”. The almost robotic repetition of the lyric “one more time” coupled with the robotic vocals provided by autotune work together to perhaps convey a certain automated, nonstop characteristic of partying. In turn, Daft Punk’s clever application of autotune to better convey the themes and tone of the song effectively challenges McKnight’s apparent ignorance of innovative uses of sonic technology.
Over the years, autotune has garnered a reputation of being uninspiringly overused and inherently dishonest, contributing to the homogeneity in popular music. Daft Punk’s “One More Time” directly challenges such a notion, demonstrating that sonic technology can be used in many more ways than to simply hide the weak vocals of a particular perfomer. Of course, “One More Time” and the Chromatics “These Streets will Never Look the Same” exhibited the ability of autotune to enhance the thematic message of a work by working in tandem with the lyrics and overall presentation of a song, thereby reapplying Weheliye’s assertion about sonic technology’s enhancement of R&B music to more contemporary work. There is also the more dishonest and “soulless” utilization of autotune that Mckenzie describes. This application is present in Gomez’s “Love You Like A Love Song” and consists of the overwhelming application of the technology across a song, pitch correcting all of the imperfections of a performance. But in truth, much like how autotune cannot be justly characterized by its popular reputation, the use of autotune cannot be represented as a dichotomous entity that can only be employed for either unimaginative and dishonest artistic endeavors or imaginative and honest ones. In fact, digital audio technology expert Savage recounts working with artists that produce a captivating performance of a song without the use of technology, but are still left unsatisfied by a isolated flat note. “…the performance was great! No one is going to notice that tiny pitch issue,” Savage writes. Savage intelligently notes that in such an instance, pitch correction, which can be utilized in a dishonest fashion, preserves the overall emotion and “soul” in the original performance, enhancing the final product. In turn, Savage successfully broadens the scope of applications of autotune by highlighting the similarities in the enhancements of obvious uses of autotune and the use of pitch correction. Unlike the public perception of autotune suggests, the technology is not responsible for the honesty or level of ingenuity of a musical work. The many nuances of the applications of autotune indicate that the misuse of a medium cannot logically be the fault of the medium itself. Rather, autotune is akin to the keys of an instrument. It is the responsibility of the musician to operate the keys in such a way that their work does not lose its “soul and heart”.
Works Cited
Daft Punk. “Daft Punk – One More Time.” YouTube, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGBhQbmPwH8. Accessed 22 March 2019.
Gomez, Selena. “Selena Gomez & The Scene – Love You Like A Love Song (Official Music Video).” YouTube, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgT_us6AsDg. Accessed 22 March 2019.
Chromatics. “These Streets Will Never Look The Same.” Kill for Love., Italians Do It Better, 2012, track 6. Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/album/5Rz4NIqwoYGDbIh40UTylV
Gill, Chris. “ROBOPOP.” Remix, Primedia Business Magazines & Media Inc., 9 February 2007, http://remixmag.com/mag/remix_robopop/.
“Why Auto-Tune Is Not Ruining Music.” OUPblog, Oxford University Press, 14 June 2012, blog.oup.com/2012/06/why-auto-tune-is-not-ruining-music/.
Core, Nick Holmes & Kevin. “Pitch Perfection? The ‘Flawless’ Vocal and the Rise of Auto-Tune.” BBC News, BBC, 17 May 2013, www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-22514705.
Sterne, Jonathan. The Sound Studies Reader. Routledge, 2012.
SelenaGomezCantSing. “SELENA GOMEZ CANT SING FOR SHIT!” YouTube, YouTube, 9 Aug. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=of6PBIuiSlU.
