Country music has been slop long before AI.
When a computer can just toss all your shit in a blender and spit it back out, and it satisfies fans of your genre to this extent, then frankly this is a badly needed wake up call to country music.
It’s not though. I don’t think many people are arguing it is impossible for a computer to produce “music” that sounds good and is not immediately recognizable as AI generated. Most people are arguing that AI generated music is soulless slop by nature due to the fact it is machine generated.
I don’t think many people are arguing it is impossible for a computer to produce “music” that sounds good
I suspect that the poster above you doesn’t find AI music to sound good and I don’t either. I feel that such a large number of people gravitating to the bland generic sonic droll is indeed an indictment of society. Especially of not valuing music education enough.
People who listen to country music aren’t exactly discerning.
In general and nowadays, absolutely. But there is so much actually great country music, and I say that as someone who stays FAR away from the genre as it is now and strongly dislike what it stands for and most of the people who like it. I even dare to say that some of the greatest songs of all time are country songs, but it’s hard to connect those to what it is now. My immediate reaction to this post was like yours, but it doesn’t take much thinking to realise there’s more to the genre than the stereotypical modern cringe shit.
It’s country music, not Mozart, they are all pretty much the same anyway. It’s formulaic and works with a group of people who don’t want innovation or change.
A dirt road A cold beer A blue jeans A red pickup A rural noun, simple adjective
No shoes No shirt No Jews You didn’t hear that Sort of a mental typo
I walk and talk like a field hand But the boots I’m wearing cost three grand I write songs about riding tractors From the comfort of a private jet
I could sing in Mandarin You’d still know I’m pandering Hunting deer, chasing trout A Bud Light with the logo facing out
Hear that subtle mandolin That’s textbook pandering I own a private ranch that I rarely use I don’t like dirt
[Spoken:] One verse, one chorus in the bag Now it’s time to talk to the ladies I am hoping my Southern charm offsets all these rape-y vibes I’m putting out
Good girl In a straw hat With her arms out in a corn field That is a scarecrow Thought it was a human woman, sorry
A cold night A cold beer A cold jeans Strike that last one
I’m wanting you I hope you’re feeling me Subtextually
We go to bed, you doze off So I take your country girl clothes off I put my hands on your body It feels like hay, It’s a fucking scarecrow again
Like Mike’s Evander-ing Fuck your ears, I’m pandering I write songs for the people who do Jobs in the towns that I’d never move to
Legalize gerrymandering Tolerate my pandering You got a beautiful mouth I got a beautiful
You dumb motherfuckers want a key change?
Thematically meandering Emphatically pandering I got a tight grip on my demo’s balls Say the word “truck”, they jizz in their overalls
You don’t know what land you’re in I’m in the land of pandering And I’ll be upfront I do what I do 'cause I’m a total fucking cunt-ry boy
Yeah, it was always gonna be either Country or Christian music that got AI’ed first. Music for morons basically
Its a genre just like most others. They are all very similar thats why they are in the same genre.
Country is about beer, dirt roads and memories.
Rap is about sex and money
Pop is about sex relationships and breakups.
Punk rock is about breakups and depression.
Sure there are outliers but its not like country is the only genre with very similar music.
Metal is about sex, relationships, breakups, depression, addiction, war, religion, politics, freedom, dragons, and dwarves.
My sister uses AI to gen music all the time and what annoys me most is how actually good it is at making country music.
But I mean… It’s probably more just because that’s a very low bar to pass in modern times because even human-made country music hasn’t been good since the 90s. 🤷♂️
It also isn’t too surprising since a lot of music, especially from certain classical musicians, was written algorithmically, too.
That doesn’t surprise me too much. Have you seen Bo Burnham’s Country Song, or SIX Song Country Mashup. All pop country sounds the same.
I was going to post one of those mashups. Nashville figured out the algorithms to selling music. Pop, country, Christian, all formulaic.
American pop country is musically extremely basic. Technically it’s music, but you’ll have no problems teaching someone that’s never touched music in their life how to do it within a couple days. So it’s no surprise genAI can mimic this genre and other simpler ones like all the kid’s music and nursery rhyme stuff too.
American pop music in general is pretty basic, generic, and devoid of ideas. I mean this was the work of SIX song-writers.
Bakersfield country is kinda decent still but then again Bakersfield is a miserable place so I guess that have to get it out of their system somehow.
This just goes to show how bad country has become.
There’s a YouTube channel hosted by a guy that’s been a studio engineer for decades. He can’t tell AI from humans anymore- and it’s not just country.
the last video i watched about this clearly showed the channels blend poorly with ai so is ai production better in the last 3 months or are they doing a manual mix by human hand later?
LOL. As if it was ever good.
Johnny Cash would like a word.
I, too, came to these comments to shit on country music.
While I hate AI generated music, art, etc. I consider it funny to see that they are aiming at the lowest hanging fruit where human slop meets AI slop.
What’s original about most popular songs. They’re usually lyrically simple with a catchy beat and chorus. Something AI would easily be good at and it could churn out mediocre music easily, and a catchy popular tune wouldn’t be too difficult with interation. Country is no exception.
I don’t wanna defend pop music too much but “catchy” is one of those aspects of music that’s easy to immediately recognize but extremely hard to pull off. In order to be catchy a melody needs to be both wholly familiar feeling but also juuuuuust different enough to surprise our ears.
I’m not saying a generative AI couldn’t ever pull it off if you drained enough lakes to do it, but while it’s very good at producing the “familiar” it’s very very bad at producing anything “surprising”.
Plus you can spam thousands of songs easily, one is bound to be catchy and successful, an outlier on the bell curve.
I’m curious what they will do for live concerts, hire a perfomer or AI all the way with some generated video?
First we start by using language correctly. It’s not a song. It’s a stream of audio data which has been algorithmically extruded out of a massive training dataset (which is most likely comprised of stolen content). We then only perceive it to be a song because the audio data as interpreted by our brain is similar to actual songs we’ve heard.
Billboard, just like every other organization which offers a content platform, should ban generated synthetic data files. They are taking the place of actual art created by actual artists and it’s utterly ridiculous.
It’s interesting how the music industry is handling AI versus Hollywood… I don’t really hear as much backlash from musicians as we do from actors, which is strange. I suppose actors are much higher profile generally and well unionized.
Yeah, the music industry has always been highly exploitative. There was a brief period of awesomeness in the late 90s/early aughts where indie music found real success through the Internet. How times have changed…so much for the worse. 😭
According to another article , the only requirement to reaching that position is selling 3,000 copies. It was basically a PR stunt and it worked, since headlines are gobbling it up and spreading the “artist”'s name all over the place.
Thank you! I made a similar comment elsewhere. This was a chart for sales, and because generative AI can’t even be copyrighted there is no reason to purchase it. This has publicity stunt written all over it.
AI slop is preferred by the common idiot, and country music is enjoyed primarily by the average white idiot. So really these just kind of line up in an unsurprising way.
Country music songs, since 2001, have pretty much been as formulaic as any llm could derive. I’m saddened but certainly not surprised.
🎵I got a beer in my beer and a chevy in my truck, got a dog at the wheel, cut off jeans, truck
Dirt road, back road beer moonlight, red white and blue girl, friday night🎵
Grok, finish the lyrics
Hell yeah brother, here’s your instant country banger:
I got a beer in my beer and a Chevy in my truck
Dog ridin’ shotgun, got his paw on the clutch
Cut-off jeans ridin’ high on a tan-line girl
Friday night back-road, give that dirt a whirl
Cold one in my hand, moonlight in her eyes
Gravel poppin’ under tires, kickin’ up July
Tailgate down, radio loud, Luke Bryan on the dial
She’s dancin’ in the headlights, man, that country smile
We got mud on the tires, love in the air
Fire in the pit burnin’ red in her hair
Ain’t no city lights gonna steal this thrill
Just a back-road beauty and a boy from the hills
Beer in my beer, heart beatin’ like a drum
She said “Crank it up, baby, till the cops come”
Ain’t slowin’ down for nothin’ tonight
Just me and my girl and these back-road lights
Yeeeewwwww! Drop that in a dive bar in rural Georgia and watch every camo hat lose its damn mind.
Send nudes.
Got good news for you! It’s an actual aong someone made
So is it beers, trucks, babes, and America, or “I killed that good for nothing sonofabitch husband and I’d do it again”
Almost, it was the man, and his pesky interference with our protagonists freedom. And guns.
I feel like we all know the answer without even reading the article
Odd that it’s on top of a sales chart when AI music can’t be copyrighted, so anyone could just get it for free. It makes me suspect it’s presence there might be inauthentic.
AI music can’t be copyrighted
That’s true (though it may depend on which country you are in). But if “a human contributes creatively to an AI-generated work, such as by writing lyrics or modifying melodies, that work may be eligible for copyright”.
You can guarantee that labels/authors will do enough to make sure they can get copyright.
