The Sad Aftermath Of The Auto-Tune Era

One of the many downsides of the Auto-Tune Era (2006-2010) is that there would eventually come a day when you'd have to sing your song live without it, and possibly sound even worse than the cheap effect made it sound in the first place.

Generally, this concern would only come into play for folks who thought they could be singers because of it, like T-Pain, but deep down in the dark ages that I've dubbed the Auto-Tune Era, a rapper made a full album of auto-tuned singing and called it 808s & Heartbreak. The rapper I'm speaking of? Sadly, Kanye West. (Side note: I'm only recapping this because I assume you all have suppressed any memory of 808s & Heartbreak's existence into the deepest, darkest, and least visited corners of your mind, like me.)

Here's a video of Kanye West at Coachella in 2011 attempting to sing one of his atrocities from 808s & Heartbreak auto-tuneless.


Sad, sad, sad. Kanye wanted to be able to sing so bad in this video, but reality just wouldn't let him, and he literally ended up screaming at the end. Enough to bring a tear to a grown man's eye (Side note: whether that tear is a tear of sadness or a tear of laughter is entirely up to you).

I know it's cool to make fun of Drake because of his singing ways, but next time you go to crack a (most likely bad) joke about him, just remember that there are guys like Kanye who would kill to have his vocal ability in this post-auto-tune world we're living in. You remember, and you remember good.