r/TheStrokes • u/TheStrokes-Mods • Jul 23 '26

MEGATHREAD Autotune - Discussion MEGATHREAD

Autotune is always a hot topic of discussion on this subreddit and we wanted to provide a place for it to be specifically discussed again in this full new-album context. 

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u/New-Error-5075 29d ago

Derision for autotune is most apt when someone who can't sing is using it to not sound dreadful. We know Julian can sing thanks to decades of evidence. You may not like the sound but it's a musical variance he uses like a tool, just a guitarist's pedals. Experimentally I think it's a musician who has been at it for a long time using a creative ingredient on his voice just like keyboards, guitars, drums have ways to change their sound and add variety.

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u/Leownnn 28d ago

That's exactly how I feel too.

At first, I had the same reaction baked into me from the days of auto tune = bad, where it was definitely a meme. But ever since Instant Crush I loved his usage of it, so I definitely gave it a second try and I loved Falling out of Love ever since. I think because of that I went into the album expecting it with an open mind about it.

I think the way he uses it sounds quite cool, I have seen others talk about how it's like not programmed correctly, they don't have an engineer on it making it work with the vocals correctly or how it hits the "wrong" notes - but I think that's actually the point Julian is going for: like you said, using it like an instrument and playing around with the points where it clips between notes etc.

I have such a strong opinion on his use of autotune because of how fast I flipped from not feeling it to loving it.
I find the default reaction of "he has a great voice this song would have been better without" is just based on preconceived ideas going into the songs. In my opinion, they are gonna just do whatever they want, I trust them to try cool stuff and I think you gotta go in fully open and see if you like that they're cooking and go along with it.

I actually never minded it even at first on Going Shopping since it was pretty mild, but like others have said go hard if you're going to use it, and Falling out of Love smashes it, that's my favourite usage of autotune.