<\/p>\n
Who is Breaking Rust? And why are country music fans so upset after they topped a Billboard chart?<\/p>\n
\u201cWalk My Walk,\u201d by Breaking Rust, hit No. 1 this week on Billboard\u2019s Country Digital Song Sales chart, a list of the most-downloaded tracks in the U.S. The artist sounds like an outlaw country singer with \u201cmud on my jeans\u201d and \u201ca worn-out hat and a six-string strap.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAin\u2019t slowing down, I was born to rise. So kick them rocks if you don\u2019t like how I talk. I\u2019m going to keep on talking and walk my walk,\u201d the lyrics continue.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s fake. The artist is an artificial intelligence creation, releasing an EP of AI songs last month that have taken off online. Even the images of \u201cBreaking Rust\u201d are computer-generated, showing a man with a cowboy hat, bandana and a chiseled jawline. <\/p>\n
Yet Breaking Rust has become popular, averaging 2.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify with additional songs like \u201cLivin\u2019 on Borrowed Time,\u201d \u201cWhiskey Don\u2019t Talk Back\u201d and \u201cKicking Back at the Ground.\u201d And \u201che\u201d isn\u2019t the only one: The Tennessean<\/a> points out \u201cDon\u2019t Tread On Me\u201d by Cain Walker, another AI artist, is No. 3 on the Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart.<\/p>\n Some fans are upset, including those who originally thought Breaking Rust was a real person or band. Others called it soulless, \u201cslop music.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen 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,\u201d Whiskey Riff editor Aaron Ryan told NPR<\/a>.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s up to us to refuse to click on slop music,\u201c an X user wrote<\/a>. \u201dIf we click on it out of curiosity we feed the algorithms, make slop songs hits, then this becomes \u201cthe new norm.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAI is already coming for all our jobs, plz let\u2019s be serious,\u201d another said<\/a>. \u201cWalk My Walk is NOT a banger, it sounds like someone dragged a country song through gravel and then turned the voice distortion to 11. There is hope for humans yet!!!!<\/p>\n \u201cBreaking Rust \u2018Walk My Walk\u2019 is everything wrong with country music and AI in one \u2018song.\u2019 The fact that it topped the charts explains why country and pop are both garbage formats these days,\u201d a third tweeted<\/a>. \u201cIt sounds like it was written by a prompt like this: \u2018write a country song that sounds like a Gen Z TikTok influencer and a rapper had a baby and have it sung by feminist with a 30 year smoker\u2019s vocal chords.\u2019 It\u2019s terrible. If for no other reason then it\u2019s obvious that it\u2019s AI because there\u2019s no space between words. Humans have to breath at least some of the time between words, people. Good Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n But music fans also noted that the song reaching No. 1 doesn\u2019t necessarily mean it\u2019s a widespread \u201chit.\u201d Morgan Wallen<\/a>\u2019s \u201cI Got Better\u201d is No. 1 on Billboard<\/a>\u2019s Hot Country Songs and Country Streaming charts, Wallen\u2019s album is No. 1 on the Country Albums chart, and Chase Matthew\u2019s \u201cDarlin\u2019\u201d is No. 1 on the Country Airplay chart. <\/p>\n \u201cA revealing and under-reported detail about the AI song topping Country Digital Song Sales charts last week: \u2018Walk My Walk\u2019 only sold about 3K copies (per Billboard),\u201c an X user wrote<\/a>. \u201dThat\u2019s more of a sign of this chart\u2019s irrelevance than it is any sort of AI takeover.”<\/p>\n But it\u2019s far from the only AI music that\u2019s popular. X-rated, AI-generated country songs like \u201cCountry Girls Make Do\u201d are going viral online<\/a>; the fake rock band The Velvet Sundown<\/a> has millions of streams; country legend Randy Travis<\/a> used AI for new music after losing his voice due to a stroke, and hip-hop\/pop producer Timbaland created an AI entertainment company with AI singer \u201cTaTa\u201d<\/a> as its first artist.<\/p>\n \u201cYou gotta remember \u2014 it\u2019s still me,\u201d<\/i> Timbaland told Variety<\/a> in September. \u201cYou still need the human element. I just use AI to add other elements to my music. It\u2019s 80-85% human.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think people did misunderstand that \u2014 like, I don\u2019t use chat, but I know that if you don\u2019t ask it the right questions, if you don\u2019t know how to talk to it, you\u2019re not going to get the right answer. It\u2019s the same thing with music: If you don\u2019t know music \u2014 and you don\u2019t know a quarter note, third note, a break, a bridge \u2014 you\u2019re not going to get what you\u2019re looking for, and your taste is key. If you don\u2019t have great taste, you\u2019re going to get what they call \u2018AI slop.\u2019 But if [it\u2019s used by someone] great, you\u2019re going to know the difference. You have to use [AI] as a collaborator, not as a creator.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.syracuse.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who is Breaking Rust? And why are country music fans so upset after they topped a Billboard chart? \u201cWalk My Walk,\u201d by Breaking Rust, hit No. 1 this week on Billboard\u2019s Country Digital Song Sales chart, a list of the most-downloaded tracks in the U.S. The artist sounds like an outlaw country singer with \u201cmud […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[397985,349516,397986,397987,380892,349455,360238,22749,23849,397988,391333,397989,397990,253056,89039,21992,380903,397991,21800,98406,22587,367095,25890,350789,23471,359725,397992,397993,22361,312400,397994,397995,397996],"class_list":["post-2154059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-35-39-years","tag-acoustic-guitar","tag-acoustic-guitar-player","tag-blue-tone","tag-caucasian-ethnicity","tag-club","tag-color-image","tag-concert","tag-country","tag-enjoying","tag-guitar-player","tag-half-length","tag-having-fun","tag-horizontal","tag-indoors","tag-live","tag-microphone","tag-mid-adult-men","tag-music","tag-musical-instrument","tag-musician","tag-one-person","tag-performance","tag-performer","tag-performing-arts","tag-playing","tag-recording-equipment","tag-silhouette","tag-singer","tag-singing","tag-string-instrument","tag-tinted","tag-toned-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2154059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2154060,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154059\/revisions\/2154060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2154059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2154059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2154059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}