Sep 17, 2018 Perhaps because of Cher’s involvement in Auto-Tune’s debut on the world pop stage, critics have often connected pitch-correction and cosmetic surgery, comparing the effect to Botox, face peels.

Okay, I’m gonna be honest: I hate this song. I mean really? “Do you believe in life after love?” What does that even mean? I don’t know which I dislike more: The lyrics to this song, or Cher herself. It’s not that I don’t respect Cher– that bitch can sing. I just can’t get past her collagen-filled lips and cheeks and the fact that she has a baritone deeper than mine. That being said, I can’t have a blog about auto-tune without giving the song Believe some kind of honorable mention.

This was the first mainstream use of auto-tune… ever. No one had heard the sound before Cher decided to make herself sound like a robot on the 1998 smash hit. This song became so popular, everyone wanted the “Cher effect.” Literally. There were reports of nearly every ultra-pop artist at the time saying they wanted to sound like a robot on their latest track.

So, why did Cher use the tool that we know and love today? Well, Cher wanted a new sound. She wanted to once again push the boundaries of music and pave a new path into the future of the 21st century. And what better way to do that than make herself sound like a robot? The futuristic sound gave Cher a curb on the competition and put her at the top of her game. At the time, it was the #1 selling track by a female artist in the U.K. ever.

The use of auto-tune put Cher on top of the world and I gotta thank her for doing it. If Cher had never used the sound of auto-tune on her smash hit what would music be like today? Some may argue that someone else would’ve eventually discovered auto-tune and used it but I like to credit Cher for her advancement in the music industry. You go, Cher. Thanks for using an awesome tool to create your futuristic sound. You brought to light a tool that has been used to create some amazing songs.

Twenty years ago, a pop star on a downswing took a chance on a brand-new piece of recording software to do the unthinkable: taking her voice, her most recognizable asset, and robotizing it almost beyond recognition.

Cher's 'Believe,' her megahit that turns 20 on Monday, changed the way modern music is made, an amusing distinction for a song with vocals that bear more than a passing resemblance to Kermit the Frog.

Yet, that doesn't mean the distinction isn't deserved. Without 'Believe,' the first song to introduce Auto-Tune to the mainstream, who knows if, or how, the then-fledgling vocal effects program would've become the mainstay it is today, transforming pop vocals before revolutionizing the past decade of hip-hop.

The Auto-Tuned vocals in 'Believe' almost didn't make the track's final cut, Cher told The New York Times in a 1999 interview. She wanted to make a dance-floor-friendly single that appealed to her gay fan base after the disappointing sales of her 1995 album 'It's a Man's World.'

Her record label's president said that 'everyone loves that song but wants to change that part of it,' she said, describing her meeting with her record label's president about the song. 'I said, 'You can change that part of it, over my dead body!' And that was the end of the discussion. I said to ('Believe' co-producer Mark Taylor) before I left, 'Don't let anyone touch this track, or I'm going to rip your throat out.'

After months of producers and co-writers tinkering with the original version, Cher came across a track by British singer/songwriter Andrew Roachford that used a vocoder to manipulate his vocals.

'We were tackling 'Believe' for the gazillionth time,' she told The Times. 'And I said: 'I'm so tired of doing this. Let's just put on this CD and listen to music and get away from this.'

Once Cher suggested manipulating her vocals, Taylor began tinkering with the song on Auto-Tune, a recording program that had been on the market for just a year, intended – and still widely used today – to help producers make infinitesimal pitch corrections to recorded music.

What Auto-Tune wasn't intended for, though, is making its singers sound like robots. Yet Taylor unlocked Auto-Tune's potential for drastically distorting vocals for stylistic effect, which shocked the creator of Auto-Tune, Andy Hildebrand, an electrical engineer who cited 'Believe' as a turning point in a 2017 interview.

“I didn’t think anybody in their right mind would ever use that (effect),” Hildebrand said.

Cher Autotune

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Hildebrand couldn't have predicted the influence of 'Believe' and its pioneering use of Auto-Tune, not as a cosmetic clean-up tool but as its own distinct stylistic effect. And it started with 'Believe,' which would become the top song of 1999, win Cher a Grammy for best dance recording and hit No. 1 in 17 countries, making her the oldest female performer (at 53) to score a No. 1 single in the USA.

And decades later, 'I honestly think that the most fun I ever had making a song was 'Believe,' Cher told Billboard in 2015.

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For her, a true queen of pop music reinvention, it's all about the element of surprise. 'Because you didn't know it was me in the beginning,' she said, 'and I was so excited.'