But she can’t sing – Without AutoTune she is painfully awful

Taylor Swift and her band react as she wins the entertainer of the year award at the 43rd Annual Country Music Awards in Nashville. (Josh Anderson/Associated Press)

Update – Feb 13, 2012– eating crow here because I just watched Taylor Swift pull off an excellent performance on the 2012 Grammy Awards.

Taylor Swift performs Mean on Grammy Awards Depression era wardrobe didn’t spoil Taylor Swift’s musical and fresh performance.

Guess this old dog’ll have to go out and get that new Taylor Swift CD. 

I was watching the late night excitement after Jay Leno and stumbled on the Country Music Association Awards just as Taylor Swift won Entertainer of the Year.

Isn’t that nice, I thought. Everybody likes her.

Oops isn’t she the singer who can’t hold a tune. They pump her performances through AutoTune.

AutoTune used to be used in recording or live shows to correct the odd flat or sharp note. Everybody is using it now since very few singers actually can sing, as in keep the tune moving along in key.

Cher needed AutoTune badly and it helped her sound better. It broke my heart when I found out Shania Twain uses it all the time.

You can tell singers who use AutoTune by a certain graininess in their voices. It’s a computer program that moves the note to what it thinks you should be singing. A little is hard to detect but the current crop of country and rock stars are leaning on it so much they all sound alike.

Another way you can tell is if you favourite star is dumb enough to sing live on TV and his/her auto-tune voice tech isn’t present. Every singer can flub a note singing live. Apparently Taylor Swift is so bad, she should never sing live.

Taylor Swift and AutoTune

Bob Lefsetz got an interesting piece of email that he passed along.

told you that 3-4 months ago. but I was just ignored.
Wait until you hear the award show tomorrow night.
Nashville should change its name to Auto Tune City

name withheld so I can still work in this fake business we call country music.
ex-monitor guy for Taylor Swift.she’s the worst live singer I have heard in a long time. I have done three award shows with her and she was the worst of the bad.
thank god for auto-tune………
_____
P.S. She’s not the only auto tuned singer in country. Some of the biggest names are auto-tuned live every night they sing.
It’s sad because there are some really good singers in country who deserve these awards way more than the people who are getting them.

Here is the article Lefsetz wrote documenting Taylor Swift’s bad voice. As an aside, I enjoyed the “goose fart” description of Dylan’s horrible Christmas CD. Funny and nobody wants to talk about how bad it is. The “goose fart” line comes from Leo Kotke on his first album.

That’s HORSESHIT!

No, I’m not afraid of putting that in the title. It’s just that if I do, this missive won’t pass through your spam filters. Hell, for those of you working at companies hyping supposedly limit-testing acts, it probably won’t pass through your company filters now that I’ve actually spelled the word out in this missive. Because that’s how afraid of plain English this country is. And if you are protected from reality, how can you know the truth?

And speaking of the truth…

Every time I write about Taylor Swift, and let’s be clear, I’ve foamed at the mouth plenty, I get e-mail from people, true pros, people I know, with big jobs, that she’s auto-tuned to death, not only on record, but live. Sour grapes? None of these people are involved with Ms. Swift.

But now I know they’re right.

Because I just caught Ms. Swift’s opening monologue, a song, on SNL.

Holy shit, she can’t sing a lick.

It’s like when you’re in the car and someone pipes up, singing along to the song on the radio, and you start to cringe, and ultimately need to say something, telling them to shut up, because their voice is so bad.

Believe me, I know I’ve got a bad voice. But I don’t try to be a professional singer.

And we’re not talking Bob Dylan here. Forget about the goose farts on his Christmas album (notice how now that it’s dropped no one is saying a word…it’s just that bad), Dylan was a student of the art, and in his heyday could sing rings around Ms. Swift. Ms. Swift couldn’t even make the high school glee club. Not even the junior high version. Hell, I know, I made it once then got kicked off.

What were they thinking here?

I could blame Ms. Swift, but she’s not old enough to know better.

But her handlers are.

Why reveal the truth? They almost even had me faked out. But watching this execrable performance I’m questioning the entire product. She can’t sing, there are co-writers… Sure, she’s got pure desire, but how much is real underneath?

Believe me, the albums are great. But what kind of fucked up world do we live in where to make it as an act, you don’t even have to sing well?

I mean it’s one thing if you’re doing comedy.

Then again, My Son The Nut, Allan Sherman, had a better voice than Ms. Swift.

But the handlers got too greedy, they didn’t know their limits. Like Master P, trying to play professional basketball. Worse, Michael Jordan trying to play professional baseball. But at least Mr. Jordan was a professional athlete.

This is the greatest case for preserving mystery in the Internet era. Hell, you didn’t see J. Lo singing on SNL. Why deflate the golden goose? Do you really need this victory lap?

Call it hubris.

Not the first time we’ve seen this in the music business.