Someone in class said, “Auto-Tune ruins music.” I didn’t argue out loud, but I wanted to. I grew up listening to Cher’s Believe on loop. That robotic shimmer? It didn’t sound fake to me. It sounded like someone crying through a machine, trying to be strong.
Later that night, I went down a rabbit hole. I found a New Yorker article calling Auto-Tune “a way to exaggerate human emotion through artificial precision.” Then I discovered that Auto-Tune was embraced early by trans artists and queer producers, not to hide their voice — but to reshape it, claim it. SOPHIE, of course, took it to a whole new level. Her voice was designed, sculpted, unapologetically synthetic — and it felt more emotionally raw than most acoustic ballads.
Inspired, I opened up Ableton and recorded a spoken word piece about grief, then drenched it in pitch correction and delay. It sounded alien. It sounded right. I realized: Auto-Tune isn’t just a tool — it’s a mask, a mirror, a scream. It’s not about hiding; it’s about showing a version of truth that’s too complex for rawness alone.
Since then, I’ve stopped treating Auto-Tune like a gimmick. For me, it’s a queer technology — a weapon against sonic conformity. And maybe even a prosthetic for emotions we can’t say out loud.
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