Music In 1998, the American singer Cher released her world hit and earworm ‘Believe’. The single was released almost ten years after her last Top 10 hit ‘Just Like Jesse James’. ‘Believe’ made autotune something cool and controversial at the same time. “When everyone started using it, it made me sound the same again,” said rapper T-Pain.
In the early 1970s Cher became famous with the hit ‘Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves’ and soon followed several world hits such as ‘Take Me Home’ from ’79 and ‘I Found Someone’ from ’87. With ‘Just Like Jesse James’ Cher scored another world hit in 1989 that appeared in the Top 10. Yet it took almost ten years before that success was matched with ‘Believe’.
‘Believe’, the title song from Cher’s 22nd album of the same name, not only became a worldwide hit when it was released 25 years ago, but also the biggest success of the “Goddess of Pop”’s decades-long career. The song popularized the use of autotune, the infamous software created to correct the sung part, but which was also used by Cher’s producer Mark Taylor to add a vocoder-like effect. Cher was impressed with the result and the rest happened.
(read more below the video)
LOOK. Watch the video for ‘Believe’ here
Yet not everyone was a fan of the effect. For example, her then record label always wanted to reduce the use of autotune, but Cher was not in favor of this: “I said: ‘I’m over the moon that you’re going to change that part!’ And that was the end of the discussion,” she continues. “I said to Mark before I left: ‘Don’t let anyone touch this track or I’ll rip your throat out,’” she tells the American ‘Page Six’.
The song was delivered to all radio stations with autotune and conquered the world. In the UK, ‘Believe’ became the best-selling song of the year and to date remains the most successful single by a solo artist ever. In the United States, “Believe” got off to a slower start, but when it finally hit the Billboard Hot 100 on March 13, 1999, Cher became the oldest woman to hit No. 1 in the playlist’s history at 52.
The “Cher Effect”
And whether ‘Believe’ made an impact. Soon the use of autotune was renamed the so-called “Cher effect”, where major world stars started playing with the software. Rapper T-Pain had the most success with it – after Cher, of course – with a string of hits, including ‘Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)’ and 2007’s ‘Bartender’. “When I started, I used autotune to change myself “, the rapper explained on ‘Sway in the Morning’ in 2013. “And when everyone started using it, it made me sound the same again.”
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Album cover of Cher’s ‘Believe’ © Cher
Controversial
Yet not everyone was happy with the success of autotune. Jay-Z released the scathing song ‘DOA (Death of Auto-Tune)’ in 2009, and declared war on rock band Death Cab for Cutie over the software’s “misuse” while attending the Grammys. Singer Christina Aguilera wore a T-shirt that read “Auto-Tune Is for P-sies” during a night out.
The inventor of autotune, Dr. Andy Hildebrand, told CNN in 2015 that artists have a “love-hate relationship with autotune.” “They don’t want to let others know that they need it and use it,” he continued.
“The most important pop innovation”
And yet artists such as Beyoncé, Post Malone and Travis Scott continue to use the software, which ‘Pitchfork’ magazine once called the “most important pop innovation of the past 20 years”.
Cher also recently used autotune in her songs. She recently told ‘Deadline’ openly about the criticism she received about the fact that autotune makes her sound unrecognizable: “Yes, I know, that’s the beauty of the whole thing!”.
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2023-10-21 16:04:13
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