A Catchy Country Tune...Written By AI?

    For the record, I am not a huge Country Music fan. It’s nothing personal; I am not a huge rap fan, nor am I a devotee of the heavy metal/slash guitar genre. Having said that, I have been known to rap a little Rapper's Delight to myself if I start really striping my 4-iron on the range! You know what I’m talking about...”Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn.” Not bad, if I do say so myself. For the love of Eminem, you are such a dork! Yes, I am...my little four-legged friend. Anyway, back to Country Music. 

    I could just never get used to the lyrics of “My dog in the back, and my gun on the rack, crushing another Bud against my head.” You know what I mean? To this day, I can hear my dear friend Jack Pepper, trying to sing Waylon Jennings, Jr. songs as we were driving over to the fine dining and drinking establishment Villa Capri for tea and scones in Trenton, NJ. Maybe it was because Pep couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, which caused me to almost drive off the Trenton Makes Bridge more than a few times! Ah, those were the days, right? Sorry… But the closest I ever get to Country Music is Little Feat's Willin' sung by the incomparable Lowell George, or That's All by Genesis ( I know, it’s not a country song...but it’s close). Maybe...Maybe...Shania Twain. But only if it’s a video! See what I did there? But I digress...

    So the other day, a friend of mine sent me a link to a song that he found out about, and thought I might like, or so he said. Now, because I respect this person’s musical opinions, I listened and then read about the song...which I always do when someone recommends a recording that I actually enjoy! In case you have not heard, “Walk My Walk” topped Billboard’s Country chart for digital song sales this past November. The song opens with a deep, soulful hum, followed by a mellow, slightly twangy voice (is there any other country voice?) telling listeners that he’s “been beat down but doesn’t stay low.” What follows is a decent bluesy ballad, full of country clichés (“every scar’s a story that I survived”) but with an appealingly catchy beat and a rich, expressive drawl. So far, so good. Right?

    Well, the artist, Breaking Rust, is no country music veteran or Nashville songwriter. “Walk My Walk”—along with the entire album it appears on, Resilient—was made with generative artificial intelligence, according to Billboard. That’s right! No humans allowed!

    That said, as approximations of human beings go, this recording is top-notch. The song and others like it—AI-created music attributed to “Cain Walker” got up to No. 3 on Billboard’s digital sales chart—brings new meaning to the debate about separating the art from the artist. If people like listening to “Walk My Walk” (and though I am somewhat ashamed to admit it, I do), should it matter whether the song was human- or machine-made? I think it is a legitimate question.

    My first reaction, albeit before listening to this recording, is that it should matter. Whether it is writing literature, or music lyrics...AND the music itself, has no feeling if the “author” does not feel. There is something instinctively off-putting about the idea of AI-made music or literature, some vague ideal of authenticity or humanity violated. On the other hand, there is a lot of absolutely awful music made by human beings every single day (as well as reams of atrocious literature written, every single day). And I don’t want to hear the argument that if you gave 500 monkeys typewriters, at some point they would come up with From The Golf Room. Please...don't embarrass yourself. You would need at least 1,000 very smart chimpanzees to come up with From The Golf Room!

    But in an era when so many pop and country hits are already overproduced, autotuned, and studio-driven, “Walk My Walk” works as yet another ephemeral hit churned out for mass consumption. AI-made tunes may never fully supplant truly heartfelt and human-created music, but Breaking Rust’s chart victory shows that for many listeners, AI is already competing effectively with the merely human. 

    Look, I understand the idea that in some ways, if not many ways, this is where we are heading. AI is a useful tool that has the ability to make our lives easier and to help us with new ways of thinking, if it has not done so already. I embrace that. And musically, maybe 100 or 200 years from now this will seem normal. But I do hold on to the idea of the preeminence of the human mind, the human heart, and dare I say...the human condition. That condition which knows our time is limited. That knows love and loss. The knowledge that enables us to reach for and embrace transcendence. And I suppose I’m being a snob here, but maybe it is a little easier for AI to write a song with three chords and a bunch of easy, sappy cliches...rather than Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Or maybe not. But it is what separates us from the apes, and I believe those human wants, desires, loves, and heartbreaks will keep us separated from artificial intelligence. 

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com