Good Morning!
Today I write this blog post in advance of the upcoming Beatles single, "Now And Then". However, this has nothing to do with The Beatles as a band and moreso deals with Paul McCartney.
BACKSTORY
2018 saw the release of Egypt Station, Paul's 17th (24th if you include orchestral? who cares) album as a solo artist. Initial reactions were mixed, with many praising his continued ability to keep up with the times and write songs for today, and some others dismissing the production style. Paul largely worked with Greg Kurstin for the album, who is most notable for his production work with Kelly Clarkson (Stronger) and Ellie Goulding (Burn) among others. Some additional collaboration was done with OneRepublic's producer Ryan Tedder. Paul and Ryan only worked on 3 tracks together, and of those 3 only Fuh You was released on the main album. Track 2, Nothing For Free, was tossed on as a bonus track to some select retailers. As far as the public was aware, there wasn't even a third song...
January 1st, 2019. Midnight. While in a voice chat with my peers, someone noticed that out of the blue Paul McCartney had released a new single. Apparently it was scheduled to be released online to coincide with the new year, and this fact was kept secret somehow. My memory is fuzzy, but I do remember sincerely liking the tune and being met with disgust by those peers, and myself being confused at their reactions. What was wrong with it? According to them, the usage of autotune was a dealbreaker, the main catalyst for hatred of the song to brew in anyone's mind. Personally, I only disliked the barely audible speech during the second act, because I couldn't (and still can't) hear what they're even saying. Here's why I think the auto-tune on Get Enough is perfectly fine.
MY DEFENSE
Evidence #1: Paul McCartney has always been chasing new vocal sounds. When recording songs like I'm Down or Long Tall Sally, he would put on a new voice to imitate the R&B singers of yesteryear. He reportedly spent an entire week attempting to capture a "morning voice" for his song Oh Darling by rushing down to EMI Studios at 6:30AM. And the album McCartney 2 features fervent abuse of tape to record vocal overdubs at different speeds, just for the sake of doing it. Over the decades, Paul has come to terms with the fact that nearly every single producer he encounters will try their best to remove/lower any vocal effects, due to his superstar status, but he pushes them not to.
Evidence #2: Paul McCartney is using Auto-Tune as an instrument and not as a crutch. Compare the song to tracks on the album Good Evening New York City. Only Mama Knows has pitch correction, meant to fix mistakes on the original vocal performance (not to mention anyways, most live albums have replaced vocals nowadays). Get Enough has these settings
turned up to 11. On Get Enough, the effect only shows up starting with the phrase "now and then", then disappears for a couple lines and comes back for the climactic "but those days are erased from my mind". This was a clear, conscious decision. Do I even need to mention that he's already a good enough singer as it is?
Evidence #3: It suits the song. Get Enough is a power ballad, similar to the style of Meat Loaf or Journey but with a more modern sound. This is pure bias, but I can't imagine the track would sound too good without the effect. Would you prefer to hear the vocals of:
-Dear Boy without the phasing?
-You Gave Me The Answer without the EQ?
-Let Me Roll It without the delay?
-Live And Let Die without the double tracking?
-Arrow Through Me without the reverb?
CONCLUSION
Is Get Enough the greatest thing since sliced bread? To me, no. But it doesn't deserve as much harsh critique as I've been seeing for the past 4-going-on-5 years. I think the knee-jerk reaction to hearing Auto-Tune of any kind stems from the overuse of it in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Plus, and this is something I've failed to mention this entire time, Ringo Starr's albums from the past decade have..... extensive use of the tool, to say the very least. And those albums aren't well received by fans.
It's just a song anyways. People tend to get heated (myself included) about discussion of music to such extreme degrees, and it's easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of tier lists, category labels, and rankings of individual songs to the point where you aren't even listening to the music anymore.
