Throwing back to the week of June 23, 1973, we find Paul McCartney & Wings holding on to the top spot with ‘My Love,’ featured here earlier this month.
Right behind is a one-hit wonder that spent 23 weeks on this chart but never made it higher than #2. ‘Playground in My Mind’ was recorded by Clint Holmes, an English-born entertainer who was raised in the States and has been a Las Vegas entertainer for most of his five-decade career.
Today’s Throwback Weekend selection brings us to the week of June 22, 1963, when the Billboard Hot 100 was topped by Japanese singer Kyu Sakamoto’s song ‘Sukiyaki.’
This was the first song by an Asian artist to reach #1 on this chart and remained the only one for nearly six decades, until BTS did it with ‘Dynamite’ in 2020. It is one of only nine songs not in English to top the chart, and the only one in Japanese. Extra credit to anyone who can name three or more of the others (and more on that next week).
My final example of an AI-generated song features two artists once locked in a bitter feud. Taylor Swift and Katy Perry squashed their beef on their own a few years ago, but if they hadn’t the machines were ready to do it for them.
This is a pretty convincing rendition, in part because ‘Roar’ sounds a bit like a Taylor Swift song from the early to mid 2010s. That makes sense, as many of Swift’s hits from that period were co-written by Max Martin, as was ‘Roar.’
Today’s AI-generated track is the best I’ve heard yet. This one imagines Michael Jackson singing George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper.’
I don’t know what sets it apart. Maybe the programmer has spent more time recreating Jackson’s vocals than others. Or maybe there is some quality in Jackson’s voice that makes it easier to render digitally. Or maybe the AI is on par with the rest but this excellent match of song and performer masks the imperfections. At any rate, this one is pretty special.
Yesterday we heard a computer-generated Jeff Buckley trying his hand at a Lana Del Rey song, and today a computer-generated Lana Del Rey is returning the favor.
For some reason, this clip segues from Del Rey’s vocals back to the original about two thirds of the way through, before switching back to Lana again. Not sure if that was a computer error or an attempt to make this more of a duet than a cover, but it makes for an interesting listen. You can kind of hear in real time the way one voice is morphed into the other.
Meet Me In Montauk 