Hips Don't Lie

Recently I was sitting in a sports bar with a friend waiting for the burgers that we ordered, listening to the really bad music selection, when up pops Shakira. I tried my best to ignore it. Sometimes it's possible to let the music fade into the background with the idle chatter about baseball and the dishwashing sounds. Not so with this song. And it wasn't just the compression that made it refuse to be ignored (though admittedly there was plenty of compression). No, this song's thorn in my side is its gratuitous use of Autotune.

If you're not familiar with this beast, I shall do my best to explain it. Autotune is pitch shifting software that you can plug in to your digital recorder or that comes in special hardware for use in a live setting. It's not just any pitch shifter, though, its purpose is to correct something that is off pitch, like, say, Shakira's voice. You tell the software what key your song is in, and it will find notes that don't fit and drag them to the proper pitch. I know, this sounds pretty gee whiz cool, but in practice it just sounds like ass, because real humans don't sing like that.

For an obvious example, I point you to Cher's "Believe." That is the sound of Autotune in action. In this case, though, it's used mostly for effect. I mean, everything else about Cher is so cartoonishly fake that it only makes sense for there to be no trace of her real voice.

The Shakira song, by contrast, doesn't make her sound entirely like a robot, but it is very obviously corrected--to the point of sounding freakish. Why? I don't really mind the sound of a voice that is a little off pitch. Believe me, I have a record collection that is dominated by people who don't sing very well. This is the sound of a real voice and it's what gives pop music some of its charm. So I don't understand why it's important to make Shakira sound like a non-human.

There is a larger argument here, I suppose, that goes: If Shakira can't sing very well, why is she making music? I could be wrong here, but I don't get the impression that people like her because she's such an awesome singer; they like her because of her performance. Why not just skip the bit where she sings and just make the show into a dance routine? That way she wouldn't even have to pretend to sing.

Maybe the added revenue stream that comes from selling the piece of plastic with music on it explains why Shakira sings. Fortunately that won't last much longer. People are buying fewer of those pieces of plastic every day in favor of downloading and what are the odds that somebody is going to pay for a Shakira song rather than just copying it from a friend? Pretty slim, I'd say. And that makes the future seem a little brighter, doesn't it?