Culture news and discussion on TalkFuse.
‘Woods’: The 2009 song that started Bon Iver’s obsession with autotune
In 2009, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon released "Woods," a stark, largely a cappella track built almost entirely from layered, heavily Auto-Tuned vocal harmonies, on the Blood Bank EP. The song marked a significant departure from the raw, unprocessed folk sound that had defined Bon Iver's breakthrough debut album, "For Emma, Forever Ago," and set the stage for the band's later, more experimental use of vocal processing and electronic textures.
"Woods" gained wider attention after Kanye West sampled it for "Lost in the World," a track on his 2010 album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," introducing Vernon's Auto-Tuned vocals to a much broader audience. The experiment reportedly gave Vernon a taste for manipulating his voice electronically, an approach he would go on to develop extensively on subsequent Bon Iver releases such as "22, A Million."
In short
- "Woods" (2009) introduced Auto-Tune into Bon Iver's sound.
- The track features layered, processed vocal harmonies with no instruments.
- Kanye West's sample of it on "Lost in the World" boosted its profile.
Explained simply
Bon Iver is the musical project led by American singer-songwriter Justin Vernon. Its 2007 debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, was known for its spare folk songs and Vernon’s unprocessed voice.
Auto-Tune is software that changes the pitch of recorded vocals. Vernon used it to reshape and layer his voice on “Woods”, a 2009 track that sounded markedly different from the debut. Kanye West later sampled the vocals for a song on his 2010 album, bringing them to a wider audience.
The track foreshadowed Bon Iver’s later use of processed vocals and electronic sounds, including on the 2016 album 22, A Million. It also became an early point in Vernon’s exploration of how studio technology could change the sound of his voice.
Art Celebrity Culture Entertainment Music