In Other Political Protest News, Death Cab Hates Auto-Tune

Death Cab at last night's Grammys. Photo credit: Gabriel Bouys/Getty

While clearly not as important as foie gras, there's another issue weighing on our hearts and minds. Death Cab for Cutie have valiantly taken up a meaningful cause: auto-tune. The band has faux-organized a pseudo-political campaign against "auto-tune abuse in music." At last night's Grammys, DCFC showed up wearing baby blue ribbons pinned to their jackets, which they claimed was to raise awareness for their "campaign."

"Auto-tuning is a digital manipulation, a correction of a singer's voice that is affecting literally thousands of singers today and thousands of records that are coming out," said the group's frontman, Ben Gibbard. "So we just want to raise awareness while we're here and try to bring back the blue note.... The note that's not so perfectly in pitch and just gives the recording some soul and some kind of real character."

Way to douche it up, fellas. But seriously folks, if you want to raise awareness against abuse in music, someone needs to start the "Free Rihanna" campaign.

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By Audrey in Arts & Events on February 9, 2009 3:00 PM

Comments [rss]

carney

So when is everyone going to start talking shit about bon iver then? He used it on his album, and the new EP.

jdavin

For those not in the know, can you explain what the controversy behind auto-tune is? Your link to t-pain.net doesn't really explain it for me... from looking on wikipedia I see that auto-tune is some technology for correcting pitch in recordings. But why does Death Cab care about that? If they don't want to use it, then fine; it doesn't really affect them if other artists use it.

Audrey

If you'd like a brief primer on auto-tune, check out the Sasha Frere-Jones' piece here: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2008/06/09/080609crmu_music_frerejones?printable=true

Auto-tune is a pitch corrector, but it's also used as a vocal effect. Critics (like Death Cab) don't like that the sound is robotic and fake, not to mention that it's everywhere in pop music lately (T-Pain is a major perpetrator on his own songs, and those that he produces). Kanye's last album was entirely auto-tune, Lil Wayne is all about auto-tune, Cher and Madonna have used it, even SNL's Andy Samberg's joke band has been using it. This is just a case of hyper-saturation leading to backlash.

Troy Morris

I'm on a boat.

partyfernandez

now, i'm not a death cab fan, but i actually think this is pretty rad. SO many horseshit musicians (many in the 'R&B' and newly invented 'rappers that try singing' genres) are using this, and it's kind of awesome that they're getting called on it.