synthesizer with lot of filtering manipulations. But he faced problems with it, so he used a Yamaha O2R mixer. He did not want "Hollywood" to sound like the music being played at the nightclubs, so he recorded Madonna's vocals with heavy compression in her headphones. Two machines were used for the vocal editing in "Hollywood". Madonna preferred the Antares Auto-Tune plug in, while Ahmadzaï chose an AMS pitch shifter. Madonna wanted Auto-Tune because she wanted "Hollywood" to have a more dance-like feel to it, although Ahmadzaï was against it. The track "I'm So Stupid" had gentle vocals, then the singing was frozen using a Roland VP-9000. When Madonna sings "Aaaaaahhhhhh", the vocals freeze and the process sounds natural, but in reality is not. When it came to adding the beats, he experimented by programming the drums in Logic Pro and changing the timing of the beats. The producer combines different samples of songs from his own collections and keeps on trying until something new is developed. The mixing for the tracks was done by Mark "Spike" Stent at the Westlake Recording Studios at West Hollywood, California, while Tim Young did the mastering of the songs at Metropolis Studios in London. Michael Colombier did the string arrangement with Geoff Foster acting as the strings engineer, conducting at AIR Studios. Music and lyrics Slant Magazines Sal Cinquemani stated that "Madonna couldn't possibly have intended to make a pop album. American Life is a folk album in the purest definition of the term—and it's reflected right in the title" and added that it has "an often ugly, lo-fi demo quality." Greg Kot from the Chicago Tribune called the record an "electro-folk album" with electronic beats and synthetic burps. Priya Elan of NME described the album as "folktronica", while Ben Ratliff, in his review for Rolling Stone, described the album's sound as "diluted Eurotechno." Jon Pareles, writing for The New York Times, characterized the album's sound as a "mixture of acoustic guitar-picking, ticking drum machines and swooping, buzzing synthesizer lines", adding that "The guitar signals the sincerity of a singer-songwriter, while all the gizmos add the retro catchiness of the synth-pop music now being revived under the name electroclash." "American Life", the title track, is the first song on the record. Starting with Madonna's multi-tracked voice questioning, "Am I gonna be a star", "should I change my name", the lyrics then develop into what