In amplified live performance, sound engineers act as the mediator between acoustic sound and amplified music. Guided by the performers, engineers “dial-in” the nuances of frequency and feedback management with equalizers, dynamics with compression and gate, volume with gain levels, and vocal effects like reverb and delay. Through ongoing fieldwork done at Ann Arbor, MI, local venues The Blind Pig and The Ark, this paper illuminates how artists maintain audience expectations of authenticity through the use of reverb and delay on amplified vocals.

American Studies scholar Jack Hamilton defines the popular music authenticity paradigm as rooted in folk music where “performance and identity were so intertwined as to be nearly indistinguishable” (2016: 63). This holds true for both folk acts at The Ark that prefer limited effects, to preserve their natural, “of the people” sound and hard rock acts at The Blind Pig that prefer excessive vocal effects to sound more like their genre’s “wet” recordings.

I will use three separate case studies from my fieldwork and analyze through a corresponding theoretical angle: 1) Walter Benjamin’s “phantasmagoria,” 2) Lori Burn’s conceptualization of metal and sound-in-space (2022), and 3) Pierre Bourdieu’s definitions of habitus, taste, cultural capital, and social capital. Through these ontological inquiries, I argue that the (dis)use of audio effects is an artistic decision made carefully by both the engineer and artist to maintain authentic genre continuity. Whether soaked in effects or not, onboard effects are used with diligence to create the ideal performance magically, spatially, and tastefully.

In the past two years, AI voice simulators have advanced rapidly, sparking controversy in pop music circles. These programs, trained on recordings of a particular singer’s voice, allow users to create new vocal tracks emulating that singer’s unique sound. These deepfake vocals now sound so similar to famous artists like Jay-Z or Drake that listeners struggle to differentiate between them, prompting fervent debates of copyright, identity, and humanity in AI-generated vocals. Enigmatic dark pop artist Grimes has enthusiastically embraced voice simulation technology, developing an AI double of her voice and inviting anyone to use it. She has asserted that “creatively… AI can replace humans” and describes herself as a “self-replicating AI popstar.” This paper explores Grimes’s voice simulator from multiple perspectives—producers, singers, fans, and Grimes herself—while centering the humans behind the technology. Using interviews, social media posts, songs made using the simulator, and transformations of my own voice, I demonstrate how singers and software co-construct Grimes’s virtual voice through the program’s capabilities and limitations, its erasure of the labor and identity of the people who sing into it, and the audible traces of their voices in the transformed. Singers experience this technological alteration of their voices in many ways: as novelty, mimicry with varying degrees of success, and/or hybridization of their vocal identity. As AI grows more ever-present in society, their perspectives help us understand how we can reckon with ourselves and our humanity through and despite this technology.

Taylor Swift’s fans, known as “Swifties,” are widely recognized for dissecting her every move in search of “Easter eggs,” or clues that point toward her next project. But for one subset of Swifties, Easter eggs have added significance—these fans, known as Gaylors, believe that Swift uses her music, lyrics, and celebrity brand to subtly signal that she is queer. Gaylors have congregated on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where they collectively interpret Easter eggs as indications of queer identity, a phrase I use broadly to indicate any expression of non-normative sexuality, following Gaylors themselves.

Drawing on Thomas Turino’s rendering of Peircean semiotics to analyze ethnographic data collected on GaylorTok in early 2023, this paper argues that Gaylors constitute a remarkable knowledge community based on shared interpretations of Swift’s work. With precision and creative deduction, Gaylors designate specific sonic artifacts within Swift’s oeuvre as hidden signs of the queer identity they ascribe to her. By “squinting their ears,” community insiders approach Swift’s work as a mutually shared foundation on which they collaboratively construct definitions of queerness, regardless of Swift’s stated intentions. Gaylors also claim political import to their activity as a form of public queer representation. While certainly promoting consciousness-raising, GaylorTok’s political resonance remains limited by its singular focus on queer visibility. This paper not only reveals how fans actively shape understandings of Swift’s iconic career, but also demonstrates the role audiences play in cultivating identity groups and directing their political energies, both facilitating and hindering effective activism.