Fra devianza e autenticità: autotune e stampa italiana durante il Festival di Sanremo

Abstract

In this article I will analyse autotune as a discursive practice marked by a duality, as an invisible device for fixing pitch and as a manifest sound effect. This duality, I argue, is a symptom of a contradiction in music production, which sees new actors emerging within the creative industries. The generalist press, as an expression of the forces of production, often employs a rhetorical strategy that connotes autotune in relation to deviant imagery. Discourse, therefore, becomes a subtle form of control to exclude the subjects thereby constructed. As a case study, I will analyse articles in the Italian press during the 2025 Sanremo Festival of Italian Song.