While T-Pain is the king of auto-tune, the watershed moment for the tool and its use in mainstream pop music may just have come in 2009 with Black Eyed Peas' smash hit, "I Gotta Feeling." That one song, with its thoroughly digitised melodic hook, became the soundtrack for every night out on every college or university campus in the United States and the United Kingdom alike. It was also the moment where the Black Eyed Peas officially descended from "questionable pop-rap group" to "soulless, computerised sh*te." To be fair, the 'Peas were never many people's idea of "good." Their batch of singles from the 2000s ranges from serviceable (the Justin Timberlake-featuring "Where is the Love") to mind-meltingly moronic (the Fergie-centric "My Hump"). On 2009's "The E.N.D." and 2010's "The Beginning" however, the Black Eyed Peas might as well have made their computer system a full-time member of the band, with songs like "Boom Boom Pow," "Just Can't Get Enough," and yes, "I Gotta Feeling" all positively dripping with auto-tune and other digital effects. The band ended up fully embracing its computerisation trend in 2011, performing a Super Bowl halftime show inspired by the film "Tron" and begging the question of whether they were more human than their robotic inspiration.
Craig is a Chicago-based freelance writer who like to talk incessantly about music on AbsolutePunk.net. He also does writing for marketing companies to "pay the bills," but his true passion lies with the pop culture sphere.
