No, Virginia, Girls Don’t Sing Anymore
A day comes when each girl must come to terms with the facts: A tooth under your pillow just collects lint. The Easter Bunny doesn’t lay eggs. Santa doesn’t do drive-bys. In the early days of the 21st century add to that: Girls don’t sing anymore– at least not the one’s that get lots of radio play.
I’m inspired to write this by two random encounters I had this week. First, I saw Kimya Dawson perform a song about a pop star whom she knows whose voice is heavily altered by software to make her voice sound “better.” Then, this Sunday, I went to a park by my house to hear some bands. Randomly, a tween came up to me and started talking. Noticing her Hannah Montana shirt, I asked dumbly if she liked Hannah Montana. She affirmed with a bounce then added, “I like her but some people say that ‘they’ change her voice, but I don’t think so.” “Waaayllll, they probably do. At least a little bit. They change almost all singer’s voices anymore.” “Do you like Beyonce? Do they change her voice?” “Beyonce can sing,” I assured her, “but even Beyonce, they probably change up a bit.”
There are many software packages out there that can “tune” an out of tune singer, extend the length of a note seamlessly, and other marvels. Check out any of the chat rooms and marketing copy of sound engineer land - and you will see a consistent story: Dude software engineer “corrects” female singer’s out-of-tune voice. The story persists though metaphor is flat.
I made this in response to Kimya and my friend at the park:
August 26 2008 11:29 am | feminist interventions in geek culture and sound & image