"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
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.
I, too, came to these comments to shit on country music.
AI's gonna ruin country music. Watch, their trucks are gonna run away, they'll catch their dog cheating and their wives are all broke down.
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?
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
I'm a Mozart hater and have to say Mozart is also very formulaic. Fuck the classical era of classic music, it's boring as hell
Yeah, it was always gonna be either Country or Christian music that got AI’ed first. Music for morons basically
Well, it was definitely going to be within modern country where it became successful and accepted.
It's been algorithm slop since the late 90's, exactly like boy bands. What's the surprise?
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.
Country music has been slop long before AI.
brother pop music has been bullshit for decades.
Maybe I'm old, but I think popular music peaked in the 90s. Everything has sounded the same since then.
Funny enough, they were playing 80s tunes at Dollar General today. Be hard to say you don't like 80s music as there was plenty of variation.
The problem with this comparison is you're always holding up the absolute best of a decade against what happens to be on the radio top ten right now. Same goes for people who think music hasn't been good since the seventies, or sixties, or whatever. It's one half nostalgia for the stuff that shaped and formed your music tastes, one half survivor bias.
There's plenty of good, new music out there. Some of it is on the radio, some of it is in the streaming top ten, and some of it is in places where you'll never find it. And by the same token, if you actually went back in a time machine and listened to the average radio station in the eighties, you'd hear some absolute dog-shit garbage. It wasn't all Queen.
There has always been bullshit that was popular, but at the same time there were pop artists who made wonderful, interesting music.
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.
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.
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.
I like real music about real experiences and feelings, regardless of genre. For every McArtist there a real artist who does it from the heart. For every mumble rapper there is an Immortal Technique. For every AI country artist there's a Willie Nelson.
An ai generated artist is also topping the R&b charts
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.
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.
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.
I've been collecting music for a while on my hard drive and AI-generated stuff has been one of my worries. I tend to download a lot of vaporwave from Bandcamp (sometimes full labels at a time) and some of those artists have used AI. I'm sure some unmarked AI slop has sneaked into my collection this way and I don't know which albums/tracks.
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🎵
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.
In the end the outcome will always matter.
Look at corporations. They thrive, harm and exploit and all know it and the masses still use their products and services because they are often too good or too monopolistic to not.
The same will be true for AI content. If it's by the masses perceived as good content it will be successful.
And to be fair.... Many human creations that get large traction and fanbases these days are not great quality. The bar to surpass really, really low in many cases.
We humans are simply dumb on average.
I have seen people moved to tears from ai music. To me no matter how good it sounds, I still feel like I’m listening to modem noises. A recent funeral for example, an ai song, written by a thoughtless prompt, filled with bored, tired cliches that could have just as easily been written by a corporate communications department, was the tear filled tribute to my step-mother as she was lowered into the ground.
It was the single most dystopian moment of my life.
Most dystopian moment in your life ... So far.
Yeah, got a feeling it’s going to be a common line of thought.
Most people are fucking idiots. Thats why ai and corps will prevail.
the worst moment in my life so far is finally realizing that the dumbest person I personally know is only half as dumb as the fool I have yet to meet.
the recursive properties of this paradoxical knowledge almost killed me.
Country today, actual music next week.
Everything goes to shit. At least the climate is going UP UP UP
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.