Quote:
“Telephone” actually sounds a lot like Britney’s 2007 hit “Piece of Me,” proving yet again how much impact Britney has had on the sonics of current pop. People love to make fun of Britney, and why not, but if “Telephone” proves anything, it’s that Blackout may be the most influential pop album of the past five years. Britney uses Auto-Tune the way Bob Dylan used his harmonica — for punctuation, for atmosphere, for an alienatingly weird sound effect. It’s a blast of vocal distortion, harsh on the surface, but expressive, capable of sounding wildly funny or abrasively pissed-off or seductive. In “Telephone,” as in “Piece of Me,” the Auto-Tune does for her voice what the harmonica does for Dylan’s in “It Ain’t Me, Babe” — a way of telling the world to keep its hands off you. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/robsheffield/;kw=[blogs,Sheffield_April2010,145794] |