The AI-driven country music act Breaking Rust is climbing the charts. But will hardcore fans accept AI?
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
OK, imagine if this song starts playing on whatever feed you stream music on.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “WALK MY WALK”)
AI-GENERATED VOICE: (As Breaking Rust, singing) Aint’ slowing down, I was born to rise. So kick them rocks if you don’t like how I talk. I’m going to keep on talking and walk my walk.
CHANG: All right. Maybe you start swaying, maybe your head’s bopping to the beat. I mean, I am moving right now as I’m listening. But how would you feel if you knew that this song was made by artificial intelligence? That’s right, this song called “Walk My Walk” was not only created with generative AI, it spent last week at the top of Billboard’s country digital sales chart. And it’s not alone. Billboard announced earlier this month that at least six AI or AI-assisted artists have debuted on various Billboard rankings over the past few months.
Aaron Ryan is an editor at the country music site Whiskey Riff. He wrote about this story and joins us now. Welcome.
AARON RYAN: Hi. Thanks for having me.
CHANG: OK, so I have to say, when I first listened to this song I was really into it, and then when I found out it was AI-generated, I felt a little bit ashamed. (Laughter) How did you like this song? Like, if you didn’t know how involved AI was, how do you feel about the actual music?
RYAN: You know, it’s a catchy song.
CHANG: It is.
RYAN: I mean, it kind of reminds me of that old Johnny Cash song “God`s Gonna Cut You Down.” It’s kind of got that groove to it. So it’s a catchy song. I can see why people like it.
CHANG: Well, OK, give me the basics here, though. What do we know about who is publishing AI-generated music right now?
RYAN: You know, that’s the thing about it, is it’s kind of hard to determine who’s behind some of these songs. Like, with this song, when you go on Spotify, it lists the artist, obviously, and then it lists the songwriter. And so then I tracked that songwriter back to another artist called Defbeatsai, which is obviously another AI-generated artist. But other than that, I kind of hit a dead end. I wasn’t able to find out anything about them. And so it’s kind of a mystery who’s behind it and who’s doing it.
CHANG: Wait. So why do you think they want it to be such a mystery?
RYAN: You know, I think, especially in country music, it’s a little controversial right now. We’ve seen a lot of backlash from artists and fans who just aren’t really ready to accept AI-generated music yet. And I think that’s more so in country music than other genres, which have depended on computers a lot more. Country music has really prided itself on the authenticity in songwriting and in music. And there’s a large segment of country music fans that don’t even like things like Auto-Tune, and so I think asking country fans and artists to accept AI is a big pill to swallow for a lot of people.
CHANG: OK, you say big pill to swallow for a lot of people, but as we said, “Walk My Walk” topped the country digital sales chart, and others have made it on airplay charts. So how big a deal is it that these kinds of songs – the AI-generated or AI-assisted songs – are charting even in a genre like country?
RYAN: Yeah, I think it’s a big deal because it’s going to force country music and kind of the music world as a whole to decide what’s acceptable. Randy Travis, who’s a country music legend, he lost his voice in a stroke a couple years ago. He recently released a song that he wrote and used AI to recreate his voice, and even that was controversial, even though it kind of had the artist’s blessing. And so now we’re getting even further from that to songs that are completely AI-generated and artists who are completely AI-generated.
CHANG: Aaron Ryan is an editor at Whiskey Riff. Thank you so much, Aaron.
RYAN: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF KEVIN LOVATT SONG, “GOD’S GONNA CUT YOU DOWN”)
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