Paul McCartney & Sean Lennon Say John Lennon Would’ve Dug Auto-Tune

Both John Lennon's songwriting partner, Paul McCartney, and the late-Beatle's son, Sean Lennon feel that John would be a fan of auto-tuning his voice — the au courant, note-cheating, pitch-shifting studio device. According to TheWrap.com, “Macca” and Sean appeared on episodes of the Apple TV+ series of Watch The Sound With Mark Ronson, with McCartney telling the famed producer: “I’d say that if John Lennon had had an opportunity he would have been all over it. Not so much to fix your voice, but just to play with it.”

McCartney added: “Yeah Auto-Tune, I would use it. If I’ve done a vocal that I don’t think is that good. . . 'oh come on, let’s stick it through,' why not?”

Ronson took John Lennon's 1970 track “Hold On,” and ran it through auto-tune, leading Sean to remark, “Pretty cool, man. . . you’re bringing him into 2021.” He went on to add: “It’s definitely true that my dad didn’t like his voice alone, like a single voice. Part of it is why he found all those phase effects, because he was always trying to find a way to make his voice sound better to him.”

Yoko Ono admitted to us that she's always been astounded by Lennon's voice, but while working on the most recent remasters of his catalogue, she had an opportunity to listen to his work through a whole new perspective: “Suddenly you hear John's voice, and how he's singing, and his lyrics are very clear. And I just didn't know that John was so good and unique, but also not unique (with) the classical diction. His diction was so perfect in a way that — just that alone impressed you. It's almost like listening to Shakespeare. I felt that John was the Shakespeare of our age.”