Whaaaaaaaat? You mean that Britney wasn't singing live while jumping around the stage under hot lights for an hour and a bit without being able to hear your voice at all? Scandal!

I can barely talk after doing that sort of exercise, never mind sing. You can bemoan that her stage shows are more about dancing and spectacle than the music, but I think that says more about her fans expectations than her ability as a singer.

Autotune annoys me because it's indicative of an obsession with the voice. My favorite pop artist at the moment, Sia, happens to be a great singer, but I think I like her music not just because of the way her voice cracks but also because I know that she penned the lyrics and melody. If I found out she autotuned parts of her album I don't really think I'd care.

I know the US national anthem, and I'm pretty sure a lot of my friends do too. You hear it a lot in US movies, tv, etc, so it's just one of those cultural osmosis things.

Personally, I think this is great. I hate the whole "singer with a microphone" for national anthems at sporting events. The crowd should be singing the anthem.

Go to a rugby international in Wales for an example.

Nice ending note by the singer... that's over the top of the original (though they may have transposed it down for the cover).

I didn't like the singer. His emotions didn't carry any weight unlike james hetfield.
The music was nicely done.

oops my bad lol, was thinking of London Grammar, not sure why but she reminded me of their lead singer.

Not sure if you missed the sarcasm tag?

Lorde isn't a band, Lorde is the stage name of Ella Yellich O'Connor (the singer).

Think Prince, or Madonna, or Lady Gaga.

I really like Lorde, but they seem to be trying to glamorise the lead singer, at the expense of the band, which often results in internal rifts, shitty music and other problems. Let's hope they can keep it together.

I like the singer, but he was best in the intro and then as the song was ramping up to the distorted guitar part, which is then cut (since the instruments aren't really built for it)... I'd like to hear him keep going for the rest of the song and really wail!

The cop called in for backup after a severe and unsustainable bout of cognitive dissonance (reading aloud in his own voice the law that proved he was wrong).

Unable to process this information because his fragile concept of self is shattered publicly and captured on video to the cheers of the crowd, but yet also trying to reason with the madness in his mind, he decides that "ejecting" is better than "arresting". Fully knowing that both solutions are wrong.

Fearful, because his brain is scrambling like an egg in a blender, he moves far away from what is really just a man standing alone singing. Moves away because somehow he is unable, unsafe as an NYPD cop, to handle a man armed only with a guitar and a voice. He needs backup.

With all of his bravery, and hand on his holster, he marches back to the musician and takes the guitar away, but the song keeps on playing.

Literally unable (4:37) to physically affect an arrest or "ejection" against a completely docile and non-resisting "suspect", our embarrassed crime fighter lets everyone know it's none of their business.

But don't worry, help arrives at last! (6:03) And now officer illiterate can be a tough guy hero in front of his cop buddies and manhandle the dangerous singer. See? He didn't even need their help. He was just biding his time for the right opportunity to capture that criminal guitar player.

This sort of thing is just a function of knowing what components of vocal tone you can manipulate, how to manipulate them, and engaging in careful, recorded practice until you can routinely reproduce the correct mix. Some vocal strengthening also has to occur over time, much like a singer gradually extending his or her range. The average female voice is only an octave higher in pitch than the average male voice, i.e. a pitch which with practice can easily be reached and maintained by nearly all men. The bigger problem is that men's voices are far more resonant, i.e. rumbly and full, than women's voices. What a man would need to do to reproduce a "girl voice" would be to raise his pitch, and then partially pinch his upper throat and palate, while simultaneously keeping a relaxed throat through which breath can easily flow. If you just pinch the throat without raising pitch, you sound like a nasally drag queen. If you raise the pitch and overly pinch the throat, then you get an artificially thin voice. Merely raising the pitch would just sound like a guy whose voice didn't deepen terribly.

Finally, all of the above would just produce female tone. Much of what we identify as "female" about a voice, isn't tone, but cadence, word choice, and inflection.

There are times when the out off tune take will actually be better than on tune. It may have more emotions whereas the on-tune part can sound a bit cold, emotionless. Happens a lot when singer is focusing on keeping it in tune. Autotuning when used correctly can bring out the best of both, emotions and tune. Personally when i'm recording someone, i try to emphasize the emotion and don't care for slight mistakes "just let it rip, will fix the tuning later".

Also, when you take pretty much any singer, record them for hours, some bits will be totally off. Take the best singer you can think of and with 100% certainty you could post clips of them being just horrible. With Britney and a like, there is some money to be made from those so we hear the leaked clips more often.

This one wasn't even that bad, just a bit out of tune here and there. Go and find David Lee Roths vocal tracks and they are just horrible, one would really have to think how on earth he is even considered to a be a lead singer. Put the original track with the rest of the band on: brilliant.

It's about context, if you take any vocal track and solo them, they are pretty awful compared to the finished song. For singers it's a nightmare in studio, you can make them cry, hell, with proper evil, you can make them quit music forever in a single session. That's why you usually never present takes back to them solo, you just fade other tracks down a bit, put some room reverb etc.

Manufactured music has pretty much always been awful. They just promote the crap out of it and once it hits a critical mass, it's all over.

Personally, I don't really care if a singers voice isn't great. A fairly well know example would be Bob Dylan. It's the passion or the message that is important to me. I actually think most of the music I like has pretty lackluster singers. Primus, Superchunk, Dinosaur Jr. come to mind. And then there's bands like the Pixies who have great vocals and the passion.

Autotune should be banned except for Karaoke where it should be mandatory.

It's not autotune on Shanias channel, i would dare to say zero correction (listen to the end of lines where her compulsory "yeahs" are, no autotune can follow those..) On the backup singer channel, could be or she is just one of those incredibly "flat" singers that have the ability to not use even a slightest vibrato (meaning, very very good backup singer, almost too good technique.. ) But it's totally flat, meaning, autotune can be used. But you or i can not hear the difference unless we hear that channel separated, in the mix not a chance in hell you can say without doubt for one way or the other..

Even i don't really like her or the music, she is quite good singer in the first place, doesn't actually need any correction but i'm 100% sure all of her albums since 2000 have been autotuned but then it's more detailed, programmed over time to sound natural perfection (each phrase is done seperately, there are deliberate out-off-tune bits etc. which happens on every record, yes, even those metal ones you listen cause of originality. Especially metal albums these days are the most heavily touched and processed after "Britney" department..)

On-the-fly auto tuning has serious drawbacks compared to off-line auto tuning. Basically, "live" autotunes are Kanye West type super duper obvious ones. In this clip, main vocals are definitely real.

I don't think that's auto-tune. You can still hear Shania's voice in that. I think what you're hearing is a backup singer who's at just the right pitch to combine with Twain's voice to sound like it's auto-tuned. Having said that, though, I can't say for sure because I could only listen to it for so long before I had to stop the video.

I still don't see why people have to hate on Nickelback. Record companies have been generating hyped out bands and singers ever since someone invented record companies. For every Beatles and Elvis Presley, there are a couple hundred Monkees and Nickelback.

By and large, people are sheep. They move with the herd. What is Facebook and Twitter other than versions of this cult of popularity? They are both shit "apps", but they make money and are popular.

I bet over half the people who like "indie" music download it illegally instead of supporting their favourite bands. The fact most people support bands like Nickleback and not indies is almost funny in it's irony.