Country Goes Autotune
By: Matt Bjorke
Last updated January 29th , 2010

The country music industry has often 'followed' trends in other industries.  When following these trends, sometimes they are months, often years, behind on the pop trends.   And as such, the trends have often failed to find country much labels and artists following these trends much success.  So, then what am I to make of a new band called Fast Ryde that is not only cribbing a pop music trend, that is blantly using 'autotune' or pitch-correction on their songs, but is releasing it to a music genre that still values a good singer and a well-written song?  

The simple answer is that while talented and worthy of their record deal due to the fact that Fast Ryde's members James Harrison and Jody Stevens can actually sing, I have to disapprove of the whole "autotune" trend.  Not because songs like their upcoming single "Top Down" use the technique but because I don't think it has a place in ANY music genre.  It takes the parts I like best about a song, vocal ability, and has the ability to make an bad singer sound melodic when the world knows that not everyone can carry a tune.  I'm all for using the pitch-correction to help fix a few bum notes here or there in a studio performance but I don't like hearing songs with blatant usage of the technique (which was basically pioneered by Cher with her "Believe" single in the 1990s).  

Fast Ryde probably will get a hit with "Top Down" because it has all the 'inoffesnive' qualities many programmers at radio look for; it's melodic, it is a bit catchy and damn if it doesn't go by quickly.  In essence, it's completely forgettable and homogenous and perfect 'background' music.  About the only thing that makes the song interesting at all is that blatant use of 'autotune.'  

I love country music.  I work in the industry.  I live and breathe it.  I've even liked some of the other trends, that boy-band music wasn't all bad and the teen and tween starlets weren't either.  But I can't help but think that if country music continues on its homogenized tract that its on, we'll lose what makes country music great and that's the ability to sing songs about life, love and the meaning of.  If we lose that, country music is nothing but another form of pop music and that would truly be a sad day.

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