Auto-Tune the news!

I have to say the news hasn't been good lately. In fact, it's been so bad that only one thing can help. That thing is Auto-Tune.

Auto-Tune is software that can correct anyone's singing voice to give it perfect pitch. Music producers use it on a large percentage of pop and especially R&B singers, many of whom would seem rather untalented without it. You can tune someone's voice like you would tune a piano, and then synchronize it with any beat. All that's missing is meaningful content.

Enter the Gregory Brothers, two of the musical geniuses behind the Obama Girl videos. Recognizing that Auto-Tune works even on spoken voices, they've taken news clips and made songs out of them. Watched back-to-back, the 13 videos of Auto-Tune the News form an hour-long opera with an actual story arc. It's strangely fascinating because it's relevant and based on quirky things people have actually said in the last two years — about climate change, Sarah Palin, and Michael Jackson.

Current events have found their way into operas, musicals and music videos before. The 1980s brought us Nixon in China, composer John Adams's dramatization of Richard Nixon's historic 1972 visit to Beijing; and Rap Master Ronnie, a rap musical by cartoonist Garry Trudeau that parodied Ronald Reagan as being entertaining but not saying much of substance. More recent stage performances have revolved around Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Remember Will.i.am's song "Yes, We Can", which set Barack Obama's most inspiring campaign speech to music? That video worked because (good) speech has a rhythm to it. Sentences vary in length and pitch. We choose certain words because they sound better next to other words. We use timing and emphasis to make a point.

CBS anchorwoman Katie Couric seems to do this automatically. Thanks to her amusing turns of phrase, she's the star of Auto-Tune the News. Talking about the polar ice caps melting, for example, Couric says climate change will cause "a snowball effect", which puts us "on thin ice". That aria practically wrote itself.

Other clips are even more surreal. This one was part of an actual debate on health-care reform.

You can't make this stuff up.

More and more serious musicians want to see Auto-Tune removed from pop music. I'd like to see that, too — but don't kill Auto-Tune just yet. I want to finish watching the news.