In Defense Of Auto-Tune

In The New Yorker Sasha Frere-Jones looks at Auto-Tune (the thing that made Cher's voice all warbly in that track) and sees it as if not exactly a necessary evil then an evil that has as much place in music as any other.

[T]here is nothing natural about recorded music. Whether the engineer merely tweaks a few bum notes or makes a singer tootle like Robby the Robot, recorded music is still a composite of sounds that may or may not have happened in real time. An effect is always achieved, and not necessarily the one intended. Aren’t some of the most entertaining and fruitful sounds in pop —distortion, whammy bars, scratching— the result of glorious abuse of the tools?