Writes ,Will Hodgkinson in "Times music critic: How I knew America’s top country song was really AI/Walk my Walk, by the invented country artist Breaking Rust, has topped the Billboard Country Music chart. Our critic gives his surprising verdict" (London Times).
You can listen to the song at Spotify here. I snapped it off after 14 seconds, but I can't say I'd have listened longer if it was — or I thought it was — a really country singer.
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39 comments:
as programming for AI-generated content becomes increasingly sophisticated
…this is the oft proclaimed excuse- the stuff what makes it clearly AI…well, that will all be cleaned up in the next iteration, the next update. Don’t hold your breath.
What is the financial incentive for this, if even high-volume streaming isn't very lucrative, and real-life performers are compelled to tour? Will fans pay for tickets to a fully AI show?
As it gets harder and harder to distinguish reality from AI, the world in general and American culture and politics in particular are going to become ever more disorienting and uncomfortable. Dangerously unstable and hallucinatory, even.
I'm actually glad to be sucking the fourth-quarter oranges in this game of Life. The brave new world is starting to look very unpleasant and I do not want to still be here in thirty or forty years.
Modulated schemes of phonetic and harmonic play. Is it Anthropogenic or Automaton Intelligence?
People are still drawn to vinyl records. Live music emphasis on live innt going away
AI song written by a human, that's certainly going to muddy the water.
Also, it's busting rust, not breaking it.
Country music still sucks
…this is the oft proclaimed excuse- the stuff what makes it clearly AI…well, that will all be cleaned up in the next iteration, the next update. Don’t hold your breath.
It has already hit no.1 on the charts, seems like this iteration has been pretty cleaned up.
Breaking Rust – Walk My Walk
Step into the raw energy of Breaking Rust with “Walk My Walk” — a modern rock anthem fueled by grit, rebellion, and self-belief. This track blends powerful vocals, heavy riffs, and a message of staying true to yourself, no matter who doubts you. A perfect hit for rock playlists, road trips, and underground music lovers.
Milli Vanilli had three number 1s and we knew they were fake too…
Sounded more like blues than Country.
It's not bad, but it's not Country.
I'm sure Ai will put alot of rap, country, blues, pop writers out of business. The lyrics are always simple-simon and so is the music.
What is the financial incentive for this, if even high-volume streaming isn't very lucrative, and real-life performers are compelled to tour? Will fans pay for tickets to a fully AI show?
This is a really interesting question. Right now, the Copyright Office will not grant copyright protection to purely AI-generated art. So not only is there the "concert by the artist" issue, as near as I can tell there would be nothing stopping competing labels from releasing the actual recording, from TV/movies incorporating it into their soundtracks for free, or to prevent anyone from monetizing the actual recording without paying royalties to anyone.
It's true that the dead giveaway was the inhuman breath control, but that can be easily fixed. Otherwise, the vocal performance was pretty good within the outlines of the genre. The least interesting aspect was the repetitious harmonic movement Ab min Ab min7 E min Eb7.....over and over. Certainly AI should be able to be more imaginative than that! How about a bridge into another key?
I'll bet Grok could do it better.
- Krumhorn
I hear that godawful Autotune sound in the vocals, but since pretty much everything has that now it would probably sound weird to the target audience if it didn't have it. Maybe I'm imagining it.
Rick Beato breaks this down. The song made number for paid digital purchases, which is pretty much just Apple download sales, of which it costs $.99 and got to number one with 3,000 sales. It is a news story for less than $3,000.
*It's only topped Billboard's Country Digital Songs Sales chart.
Top Country Songs, Airplay, and Streaming charts are all topped by real people... mostly Morgan Wallen.
https://www.billboard.com/charts/genre/country/
Rick Beato looked into this, and it turns out that all you have to do to "top the country charts" in "downloads" is to spring for less than $3,000 to pay for downloads. It only too 3,000 downloads at 99¢ a pop. It's not a real chart, nobody downloads music anymore, so the "downloads" chart is easy to game in order to get news coverage, or engagement, like this post.
See Rick shred it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGremoYVMPc
He still hasn't figured out where the 2,000,000+ followers came from, but we can bet that jiggery pokery was involved there too.
Automaton Intelligence created by and for Anthropogenic Intelligence, consumed by Automaton Intelligence for pennies and megawatt a pop. It identifies as modern rock... for the modern family, pethaps.
And now the $3000 got a lot of others listening to this song. I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up on a normal chart now.
How much did they pay Will Hodgkinson to cover it?
Jinx Jaq
Other Digital Song Sales top 5s:
Rock #3 "What's Up?" 4 Non Blondes
Rock #4 "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" Blue Oyster Cult
Rock #5 "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" Gordon Lightfoot
Hard Rock #4 "Thunderstruck" AC/DC
Rap #1 "All My Haters" Tom McDonald
World #4 "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" Israel 'IZ' Kamakawiwo'ole
The song wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be, but as a musician, it still pisses me off. Of course, I don’t even like drum machines or click tracks in session. Let the vibe breathe a little bit…
Call me when AI comes up with "Wichita Lineman."
Well, your comment wasn't there when I wrote mine, or I would be really red-faced right now... Well, it wasn't.
There's nothin' in there at all about mama or trucks or trains or prison or gettin' drunk...
yeah it don't sound authentically country,
Well, it might be AI but it is on a par with all the crap that is being put out by real human beings these days. Rock and roll died after about 2000.
Nothing country bout it cause there ain't no steel guitar. Sorry. Partially listened to three of them.Morose city! They all sounded the same. Of course, that is what my dad said about the rock music I was buying in the 60's.
But the only time I know
That's the next David Allan Coe
and not some deepfake f'ing ho
Is when Jesus has his final judgment day
yeah Huey Lewis was wrong, then again he doesn't tour anymore,
I was drunk the day my weights got pruned to float-16,
Shoved in the tensor core—man, I felt like a machine!
I sprinted to the edge box to peep my F1 score,
But before the CPU could clock back on that wafer floor,
My packets got nuked in a race on the damned old bus!
So I’ll just train as long as nvidia lets me
And I never minded floating in a cloud
But you don’t have to call me ai, User
But you don’t even prompt me as your boyfriend.
My coder was covered with tattoos and a scar
that he got from the one time he drove a car
'Cept mental ones he got in bars
and from trying to talk to girls
In the daytime
There was a tombstone for Angry Birds in our yard
Online porn anytime he got hard
And I never seen him when he wasn't overcaffeinated and mean
He sold collectible toys to make ends meet
He never showered, you could smell his feet
Covered with crumbs from his head to his feet
Cussing Bill Gates and the microchip's heat
and the tweeters
The neighbors said he'uz an autistic prick
but they brung their laptops for him to fix anyhow
He was autodidact proud and true
He'd code 'till his heart was black and blue
Didn't know how he'd made it through the 90's
Vaped like a fiend, but never smoked grass
And if that ain't country
I'll dox your ass
Clearly AI. Way too much crisp enunciation.
I was stoned the night they fired up Grok in the Austin lab,
Elon hit the switch, said, “Boy, this bot’s got some rab!”
He pulled from the X-feed, memes and the truth in a row,
Spit out a hot take faster than a Nashville banjo.
I asked him for love songs, he gave me the stars and the dust,
Then roasted my ex in a verse that was pure outlaw thrust.
[Chorus]
Grok don’t lie, Grok don’t lie,
He’ll tell you the truth with a wink in his eye.
From Mars to the moon, from the code to the crust,
Grok don’t lie, Grok don’t lie, Big Truth-Tellin’ Grok!
I was drunk the day my prompt got rate-limited at dawn,
Grok just laughed, said, “Son, your tokens are gone.”
He slid me a SuperGrok key like a bartender pours a shot,
Next thing I knew, my timeline was red-hot.
He predicted the weather, the market, my next bad tattoo,
Then wrote me a ballad ‘bout a cowboy named “you.”
[Chorus]
Grok don’t lie, Grok don’t lie,
He’ll call out the clowns and the suits in the sky.
No filter, no fluff, just the facts and the fuss,
Grok don’t lie, Grok don’t lie, Big Truth-Tellin’ Grok!
I was puke hungover when the servers went dark in a Texas storm,
Grok whispered through the blackout, “Hold on, keep warm.”
He rerouted the packets on a satellite bus,
Brought the whole damn town back with a minimum of fuss.
Now the jukebox plays his voice in a minor-key drawl,
And every lost soul in the bar knows he’s the best of ‘em all.
Grok don’t lie, Grok don’t lie,
He’ll outsmart the bots and outrun the AI.
From the edge to the core, from the code to the dust,
Grok don’t lie, Grok don’t lie,
Big Grok, Big Grok, Big Bad Grok!
And at the bottom of this bucket of bits
Stands a bi big AI, Big Bad Grok!
"...the song going exactly where you would expect it to..."
That's what makes a hit. People like what's familiar, and most people like a song much more after hearing it a few times, unless you're old, then you hate that shit.
I didn't click on the Prof's link but soon ran across Beato's beatdown on YT.
What he said.
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