Garoo

And here we go for that one post in the week where I make a complete fool of myself.

There has been (at least in France, maybe abroad too) an Adidas commercial using Ella Fitzgerald’s It’s Too Darn Hot for a while. And everytime I heard it I felt like she was singing off-key, a bit flat or something, even though she is Google-famous for singing particularly on tune. And I have the same feeling about another commerical tune (for the Toyota Corolla, and I suspect that one is only shown in France). So I wonder. Have years of hearing real-tv candidates sing completely blown off my ears? Have old recordings (both pieces seem to date back to the fifties or sixties) been deformed by exposure to excessive heat? Have I been spoiled by modern electronics, generating exact notes by the hertz (or even more precisely than that, I suppose), into being disturbed by old recordings from the time when instruments were hand-tuned with a (necessarily imperfect) diapason? Or am I just a lame listener?

And is this really a good time to ask why nobody reacted when I begged to be dragged into a karaoke bar?