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.
One of the most popular uses of AI in the music space is the resurrection of dead artists. This technology allows us to hear (or at least pretend to hear) new material from singers who were sadly silenced. This is particularly poignant when applied to those who died young.
Jeff Buckley was just 30 when he drowned in 1997 having released only one studio album (1994’s wonderful Grace). Several posthumous releases have attempted to capitalize on his popularity, which is just a pre-AI form of exploitation. I’d argue that the AI efforts are less cynical because they aren’t rooted in capitalism.
They never told us in the Terminator and Matrix movies that, before the machines destroyed humanity, they performed classic songs in the voices of different artists. That seems to be the trajectory we’re on, anyway.
This week I will feature five songs reimagined by AI to feature new singers. I’d love to hear my readers’ thoughts on the artistic and ethical implications of this practice.
The week of June 15, 2013, is putting Throwback Weekends to the test. Not only has the #1 song already appeared on the blog, but so have numbers two through four. No worries, though… it’s called the Hot 100, after all.
Topping the charts that week was ‘Can’t Hold Us‘ by Macklemore — Ryan Lewis, still hanging on from three weeks ago. In second place was Justin Timberlake’s ‘Mirrors,’ which I wrote about nine years ago. At #3 was Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky,’ which I featured on the blog a decade ago in a post that makes me sounds like an old man shouting at a cloud. Finally, the fourth spot is occupied by Pink and Nate Ruess, whose ‘Just Give Me a Reason‘ featured on a recent edition of Throwback Weekends.
Meet Me In Montauk 