“Singing from the Heart”

This chapter explains the part of a wider study, which included 54 participants and explored girls' engagement with pop music more generally. It includes the data collected in focus groups and interviews with 22 participants from the wider study. The chapter presents an analysis of the girls' beliefs, exploring their subjective responses to authenticity in pop music and how they employ the concept, with particular reference to female pop stars. The expression "singing from the heart" is open to several interpretations. The chapter suggests that the interpretation of the sound of auto-tune is influenced by it subjective moral beliefs about the technology, which in turn are shaped by wider cultural discourses surrounding music, technology and authenticity. One interpretation is that "the heart" refers to non-physical attributes, such as the mind or the soul. Imogen's interpretation of this stance as resistant further reinforces the idea of musical authenticity as a dichotomy, with image in direct opposition to sound.