23-07-2011, 00:30
You reminded me of a story in one of Bill Drummond's books about working with Tammy Wynette on the KLF's "Justified & Ancient" (an absolutely brilliant record). He said that she was so used to having the musicians follow her rhythmically that she couldn't cope with the click. She never hit the beat through the entire verses she sang. The engineer turned to him and said "what do we do?" And his partner Jimi Cauty said "don't worry, we'll fix it." They went through it beat by beat and basically quantised her voice so that she hit with the beat, and that's what you hear. Most people have no idea how commonplace this is. :-)