For decades, pop singers have developed unique voices. However, in recent years, there has been a sudden change: it’s hard to tell the difference between many of today’s popular artists, like Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and Sabrina Carpenter.

The culprit is autotune: the technology is big in music now, and while singers themselves still have talent, they don’t have to work as hard with this new tool. This is why these popular artists are all similar, and the use of autotune has become obvious to the listener: In Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso, for example, the autotune drowns Sabrina Carpenter’s actual voice out, which results in a very recognizable, computer-ish sound. This makes the song appear very “pop” while creating a repetitive, cliché song made for mainstream media.

While autotune can be used for a creative twist in certain music, many artists today abuse it and are making songs that are repetitive and boring. The tool has been especially important in the growing trend to make music for social media. TikTok, and other short-form content such as Instagram Reels, use short clips of music for their brief videos. This causes only short snippets of songs to explode in popularity, as they are made to fit into the majority of algorithms.

Pop music used to be very creative and not as repetitive, and alternative bands used to be able to break into the mainstream. The overwhelming popularity of artificial pop artists forces more and more unique artists out of the spotlight. Musical acts need to start sounding like themselves again, easing off of the autotune and growing an original style to satisfy a larger audience of listeners.