Please listen to the song first This is AI generated. The better AI gets at making art, the more I begrudgingly feel that the artistic enterprise is truly coming to its death, except as purely...
Please listen to the song first
This is AI generated.
The better AI gets at making art, the more I begrudgingly feel that the artistic enterprise is truly coming to its death, except as purely live gig performance. People will retroactively say that AI art is trash only after learning or sussing out that it was AI generated, not on its actual merits. The opinions of critics are shifting to exclude an ever expanding set of styles that happen to overlap with what AI currently tends to mimic, and it'll continue to expand until there's nothing left to consider as authentically human. I don't think this song is a masterpiece but, after cleaning up the most auto-tuny sounding parts, this sounds like the type of song that would've topped the charts in the late 2000s/early 2010s.
Also, plz don't add AI tags to this for the sake of surprise/discussion.
Thanks for sharing! Definitely worth discussion, I think. And for people unfamiliar with her, I do think it's worth listening blind (which... weird way to put it) first. My Own Thoughts So I...
Thanks for sharing! Definitely worth discussion, I think. And for people unfamiliar with her, I do think it's worth listening blind (which... weird way to put it) first.
My Own Thoughts
So I wouldn't have pegged it as AI, but then, I'm not the best judge of that. I mean... I listen to music primarily for the melody and vocals. I also listen to a LOT of Vocaloid. And I think that adds an important layer to the discussion of AI usage in music compared to other creative fields, which I'll get to in a minute.
Something of important note after looking into Xania Monet a bit more: the lyrics are written by a real human and are NOT AI slop. From a cursory search she uses the app Suno to make the music and vocals. I genuinely have no clue how much musical knowledge she has, one article mentioned she'd put in prompts like music genres, so she may not be able to even read a single musical note. However, the lyrics are poems she wrote.
And the lyrics are good. This song's lyrics are incredibly emotional, it's clearly her own story and comes from the heart. It doesn't match my own life story, but I know it will resonate with a lot of other people. It has a power to it, the same way many other songs do when it comes to such personal experiences.
This comment caught my eye in particular:
This is a beautiful song ... Monet why not write for someone who can sing... K.Michelle I could hear her voice singing this .... beautiful
My first thought was just how out of touch that comment is. "Yes... Why doesn't this previously unknown song writer write for a well-known singer?" Reality doesn't work that way. And frankly, I'm not sure how to break into the songwriting business without being a singer or partnered with one.
With music, people tend to often pay attention to the singer more than the songwriter. Most of the songwriters I know who merit mention, even when they're not the singer, gained fame through their own music first. Lin Manuel Miranda is a famous example. Toby Fox is getting a lot of jobs. Sia's music led to her becoming songwriter for several famous singers in the US before finally achieving mainstream fame.
If you can't sing though, it's hard to build up that recognition even within the industry. You need a voice, but that voice will be the name attached to the song. It's different from other creative fields being poached by AI like voice acting, because usually voice acting isn't the primary focus of the work. But with music, the voice is everything.
And that brings me back to Vocaloid.
Vocaloid producers still do the majority of work on a song themselves—composing the instrumentals, tuning those instruments, tuning the voice banks, sound mixing, etc.—but ultimately, they use virtual voice banks rather than their own voices. Many producers CAN sing and are incredible, but they first gained recognition from their Vocaloid songs. So many musicians in Japan have gotten their start through Vocaloid in some way, either by being a producer or covering popular songs made with Vocaloid voice banks.
The comparison keeps popping into my head now because of the comment section, particularly the one I quoted. While AI is encroaching on way too much in the creative sphere, when it comes to vocals in music... Well, honestly, there aren't many options for songwriters who don't sing. Like I said, the vocals basically become the "face" of the song. You can't really just hire freelance singers for an entire album's worth of songs because people look for singers more than the songwriter.
In this case, she seems to be using AI for everything but the lyrics, and I'm not a fan of people doing that for instrumentals and composing. One fun thing about composers is picking up on little trends and "trademarks" to their musical style. That's a big part of why Vocaloid producers get so big; the fact they all use the same voice banks put more focus on the music. It's awesome to see how someone's style evolves over time, a lot of producers even remake older songs as they get more experienced.
If you make all of the song through AI, the music loses that personal touch. You can have songs in a dozen genres, but people tend to like musicians because of their personal styles. So I'm not a fan of leaving everything in music to AI.
But... Thanks to a decade-plus of listening to Vocaloid, I also realize now that I don't object as strongly to AI vocals in music. AI vocals feel fairly similar to Vocaloid to me in the sense they're a substitute for the songwriter. So to that end, AI vocals may actually be good by allowing more songwriters to gain the recognition needed to open up business opportunities to work with actual singers, just as Vocaloid does to this day.
Please listen to the song first
This is AI generated.The better AI gets at making art, the more I begrudgingly feel that the artistic enterprise is truly coming to its death, except as purely live gig performance. People will retroactively say that AI art is trash only after learning or sussing out that it was AI generated, not on its actual merits. The opinions of critics are shifting to exclude an ever expanding set of styles that happen to overlap with what AI currently tends to mimic, and it'll continue to expand until there's nothing left to consider as authentically human. I don't think this song is a masterpiece but, after cleaning up the most auto-tuny sounding parts, this sounds like the type of song that would've topped the charts in the late 2000s/early 2010s.
Also, plz don't add AI tags to this for the sake of surprise/discussion.
Thanks for sharing! Definitely worth discussion, I think. And for people unfamiliar with her, I do think it's worth listening blind (which... weird way to put it) first.
My Own Thoughts
So I wouldn't have pegged it as AI, but then, I'm not the best judge of that. I mean... I listen to music primarily for the melody and vocals. I also listen to a LOT of Vocaloid. And I think that adds an important layer to the discussion of AI usage in music compared to other creative fields, which I'll get to in a minute.
Something of important note after looking into Xania Monet a bit more: the lyrics are written by a real human and are NOT AI slop. From a cursory search she uses the app Suno to make the music and vocals. I genuinely have no clue how much musical knowledge she has, one article mentioned she'd put in prompts like music genres, so she may not be able to even read a single musical note. However, the lyrics are poems she wrote.
And the lyrics are good. This song's lyrics are incredibly emotional, it's clearly her own story and comes from the heart. It doesn't match my own life story, but I know it will resonate with a lot of other people. It has a power to it, the same way many other songs do when it comes to such personal experiences.
This comment caught my eye in particular:
My first thought was just how out of touch that comment is. "Yes... Why doesn't this previously unknown song writer write for a well-known singer?" Reality doesn't work that way. And frankly, I'm not sure how to break into the songwriting business without being a singer or partnered with one.
With music, people tend to often pay attention to the singer more than the songwriter. Most of the songwriters I know who merit mention, even when they're not the singer, gained fame through their own music first. Lin Manuel Miranda is a famous example. Toby Fox is getting a lot of jobs. Sia's music led to her becoming songwriter for several famous singers in the US before finally achieving mainstream fame.
If you can't sing though, it's hard to build up that recognition even within the industry. You need a voice, but that voice will be the name attached to the song. It's different from other creative fields being poached by AI like voice acting, because usually voice acting isn't the primary focus of the work. But with music, the voice is everything.
And that brings me back to Vocaloid.
Vocaloid producers still do the majority of work on a song themselves—composing the instrumentals, tuning those instruments, tuning the voice banks, sound mixing, etc.—but ultimately, they use virtual voice banks rather than their own voices. Many producers CAN sing and are incredible, but they first gained recognition from their Vocaloid songs. So many musicians in Japan have gotten their start through Vocaloid in some way, either by being a producer or covering popular songs made with Vocaloid voice banks.
The comparison keeps popping into my head now because of the comment section, particularly the one I quoted. While AI is encroaching on way too much in the creative sphere, when it comes to vocals in music... Well, honestly, there aren't many options for songwriters who don't sing. Like I said, the vocals basically become the "face" of the song. You can't really just hire freelance singers for an entire album's worth of songs because people look for singers more than the songwriter.
In this case, she seems to be using AI for everything but the lyrics, and I'm not a fan of people doing that for instrumentals and composing. One fun thing about composers is picking up on little trends and "trademarks" to their musical style. That's a big part of why Vocaloid producers get so big; the fact they all use the same voice banks put more focus on the music. It's awesome to see how someone's style evolves over time, a lot of producers even remake older songs as they get more experienced.
If you make all of the song through AI, the music loses that personal touch. You can have songs in a dozen genres, but people tend to like musicians because of their personal styles. So I'm not a fan of leaving everything in music to AI.
But... Thanks to a decade-plus of listening to Vocaloid, I also realize now that I don't object as strongly to AI vocals in music. AI vocals feel fairly similar to Vocaloid to me in the sense they're a substitute for the songwriter. So to that end, AI vocals may actually be good by allowing more songwriters to gain the recognition needed to open up business opportunities to work with actual singers, just as Vocaloid does to this day.