Auto-tune the News

Songify the News (known as Auto-Tune the News for the first thirteen episodes) is an American musical web series popularized by Brooklyn musician Michael Gregory, and later his band The Gregory Brothers. The Gregory Brothers digitally manipulated recorded voices of politicians, news anchors and political pundits to conform to a melody, making the figures appear to sing. The group achieved mainstream success with their "Bed Intruder Song" video which became the most watched YouTube video of 2010. Similar videos, often non-political, thereafter appeared as part of the continuing Songify This series. The Gregory Brothers continue to create films pertaining to politics and current events on their YouTube channel Schmoyoho using Auto-Tune-like software, in a format much like their original Auto-Tune the News videos. After a hiatus in the series, these clips were rebranded in early 2012 under the title of Songify the News. Production Michael, who graduated from Appalachian State University with a degree in music and a concentration in recording and production, first created a "debate musical" using footage of the first presidential election debate of 2008 titled "Debate Highlights—in song and dance". This early effort did not use the Auto-Tune software to manipulate the voices of the presidential candidates in the video. His brother Evan, a music major at Swarthmore College '01, encouraged Michael, who had prior experience with Auto-Tune, to attempt to use the software in his next video to make the political figures appear to sing along with the music. Michael used footage from the vice-presidential debate of 2008 as the basis for the Auto-Tune experiment, and the resulting creation, "VP Debate in Song and Dance," became the prototype which the Auto-Tune the News videos would expand upon. As the concept began to attract notice, Michael recruited the rest of the Gregory Brothers to collaboratively develop the Auto-Tune the News series.