Off the record: Out of tune and proud

Cher is ordinarily only considered a pioneer in the field of skimpiness, yet the 62-year-old singer has found herself belatedly responsible for a powerful new musical trend in the US. Now it's coming over here.

Auto-Tune used to be the music producers' little secret, a computer program that detects singers' bum notes and digitally shifts them to the correct pitch, thereby perpetuating the illusion that the brightest stars really are flawless. It can be a fairly subtle device, but when turned to its strongest setting, as on Cher's huge 1998 hit Believe, it makes the vocalist sound like a robot with the wobbles.

It was tucked away in the studio toolbox again until 2005, when Florida R&B singer T-Pain released a debut album on which his voice is so digitised it sounds as if he is made entirely of titanium. Lately his alien style has been bought into wholesale by A-list Grammy favourites such as Kanye West and Lil Wayne.

Lil Wayne's next album Rebirth, released this summer, is a veritable carnival of Auto-Tune, and I've just had a preview of a July album by Mr Hudson, who is the first notable UK adoptee.

Oxford graduate Ben Hudson made one collection of catchy but unremarkable indie pop as Mr Hudson & the Library in 2007, but has since become thick as thieves with Kanye West and all but stopped singing like a human being. He could be the first of a flood of British Auto-Tuners.

This was not a development envisaged by inventor Andy Hildebrand, a retired oil industry scientist who had been using sound waves to find possible drilling locations. Hildebrand realised that similar "autocorrelation" technology would work with singing and struck gold instead — his company now boasts that Auto-Tune is "the largest-selling audio plug-in of all time". However, it was designed to be used as cover-up for occasional slight blemishes, not as a prominent instrument in itself.

Listen carefully and Auto-Tune is audible in most current pop music. Lady Gaga, who has dominated our charts this year, doesn't sound as extreme as T-Pain, but there's still something artificial about her and I don't just mean her terrifying appearance. Lionel Richie sounds like he's using it on his new album, despite being acknowledged as someone who can really sing.

It has also saved the career of Britney Spears, whose voice is so heavily tweaked on her latest album she sounds like a Dr Who villain. A version of Auto-Tune also works live, thankfully — her summer concerts could be grand-scale humiliations otherwise.

It's a sound that's easy to hate, easy to mock and will make much of today's music sound embarrassingly dated in a few years' time. Complaining about its artifice is pointless though. Studio trickery has been a key facet of pop since The Beatles.

Pop actually deserves credit for making a proud feature of its most synthetic qualities. It's the rock bands who like to pretend they aren't given a producer's polish who are the real fakers.

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* The umpteenth album from Sonic Youth isn't out until 8 June but the ageing hipsters are working hard to stimulate early interest. There's a London gig at the Scala on Monday, a link to a free download of new song Sacred Trickster at www.sonicyouth.com, and if you buy The Eternal early at www.buyearlygetnow.com you can stream the album in full from Tuesday.

* Jarvis Cocker, music's tallest weed, is getting tough on next month's new solo album, Further Complications. It's produced by Steve Albini, the man who made the rage palpable on Nirvana's In Utero. The first taster, Angela, a free download at www.jarviscocker.net, has turned up the guitars but is still Jarvis's characteristically seedy pop about a 22-year-old who makes him "feel the sap rising tonight".