Autotune is a form of addiction and functions just like a drug addict that
needs purer and purer levels to attain the same "high". Normal things no
longer sound "good enough". Autotune is to good music as an apple is to
corn syrup.

The same exact thing could be said about loudness/compression used in
audio mastering. Just as the "hypercompression wars" hit CDs in the
mid-'90s, the same thing happened to *cassettes* as well -- pull out
an old (but well-cared for) cassette from the '70s or '80s and you'd
be astonished by how much dynamic range they have (yes, even despite
the background hiss).

And in Ms. Jones' case, it is worthwhile to seek a copy of her "Early
Sessions" CD, which not only offers her songs in a more pure form,
lacking the over-dubbed backing vocals and extra instrumentation, it
is also refreshingly free from the over-compressed "grunge" of her
commercial CD release. It is amazing to be able to listen to "Don't
Know Why" without that awfully obvious clipping distortion during the
"loud" bridge parts -- and her voice isn't jacked up enough in
loudness to drown out the piano and drums, either.

Still, I perfer the live, on-pitch Saturday Night Live rendition of
the song. Unfortunately, I didn't have my VCR cued up at the time.
So, not that I condone "sharing" of copyrighted music, but does
anybody have a good-quality MP3 of it? Er... a "friend" of mine uses
Kazaa, and "he" hasn't been able to find it there yet.