Ashlee Vance visits Nashville songwriters who fear AI will strip music of authenticity. Shane Mack demonstrates an AI trained on four Nashville writers, generating a full country song. Kid Rock calls AI another tool but warns it could disrupt the industry unless artists' rights are protected.
Nashville has turned into Disneyland for people trying to get drunk and/or married.
It's my homeboy's birthday, man. We're lit, y'all. Hey!
Each evening, the masses pack Broadway Street to drink at country singer-branded bars. The scene is thick with revelry and excess. Bachelorette parties cruise around the rest of downtown in booze wagons. One after another after another after another. I'm told that Nashville used to be a little more like this place, Joelton Hardware, Feed, and Pharmacy. It's about 25 minutes from downtown. It's full of locals and brimming with community.
Everybody's all divided, and I was like, you know what? Coffee's the one thing that brings people together. I've always wanted to call it Middle Grounds Coffee.
It's weird and wonderful, and Chris, the owner, makes everyone feel at home.
Hey, anybody out there need a drink?
Since Nashville is full of songwriters and aspiring musicians, I came here to take a temperature check on how people are feeling about AI.
How do I feel about AI? I do not like robots. I do not like AI. I do not support AI.
I don't think we've seen enough of it in play yet to really see the ultimate good or the ultimate bad of it. We're still kind of forging that, Honestly, I'm kind of against it.
I think the whole thing is scary as fuck.
If you want to write something that's relatable and true and resonates with people, why would you use AI? Why wouldn't you want to write something true to yourself? That's the whole, the whole point.
It feels like it's like this double-edged sword, which I think all technology trends, whether it's in music or not, all kind of feel like that.
One Jolton regular is Shane Mack. He's a tech dude who did his time in Silicon Valley and then came here for something different. As it happens, Mac dabbles in music too, and he's been training an AI model on his favorite country singers. So we decided to put the model to work.
People will say AI doesn't write very well, which is true because it's writing general, it's writing broad, and great writing is usually really specific. The secret to trying to make AI write better for you is to draw a smaller box around the data set. And so when I saw the ChatGPT projects, you can train a project to only think like these 3 songwriters in Nashville.
Can we disclose which 3 you picked?
I actually did it on 4: Ashlee Vance, Chris DiStefano, Ben Johnson, John Byron. Okay, big songwriters. So You know, I don't know, is it right or wrong that I just kind of like built a model to try to think like they think?
Yeah.
Have you shown this to them?
Yeah, yeah, I actually have.
So were they pissed at you?
I mean, they might be pissed at me for doing this interview. Let's, let's write a song.
Great.
So it responds like, what type of song are we writing? Heartbreak, summer love, small town nostalgia, bar anthem, faith and doubt, etc. Got a title of the hook you want to build it around? If not, I'll pitch a few.
I want to do a song about an AI that comes to Nashville hoping to make it big as a musician, but nobody really wants it around. I actually wrote something for this. Hang on. I wasn't born yesterday, but I was turned on. Some humans filled me with Reddit posts, and now I can think along. I don't drink whiskey or drive a truck, and I ain't got a dog. All I have is everything stored in my logs. I want to be one of you, but I'm just not. Will you let me sing a verse or take me out in the parking lot?
So let's say, can you write a good verse for this? Rolled off the bus on Broadway Wednesday, 3:09. Printed out a face they said was weather but kind. Had a thumb drive full of heartaches. Songs I Never Lived and a preloaded line, hey y'all, I'm just trying to fit in.
And do you, do you take this and put it in Suno? Because this is ChatGPT, it's not going to generate—
write the whole, whole song. Give me another verse too. Okay, so like, here's your song.
All right, here we go.
Printed out a face they said was weathered but kind. Had a thumb drive full of heartache songs I never lived. And a preloaded line, hey y'all, I'm just trying to fit in. Hit the open mic at Tootsie's. They said, cute trick kid. But I saw them flinch when the chorus hit.
I wasn't born yesterday, but I was turned on. Some humans filled me up with red poles, now I can think along. I don't drink whiskey, don't drive a truck, and I ain't got a dog. All I got's a memory bank and everything stored in my life. I wanna be one of y'all, but I know I'm not.
Would you let me sing a verse? Take me out to the parking lot.
Obviously, there's only room for one final arbiter of truth around AI and music. One totally rational mind who could settle this debate once and for all. I am, of course, talking about Kid Rock.
What'd you think of our song that we made?
I thought it was average. You might want to stick in the tech lane.
Obviously. Tech and entertainment are colliding. I was just curious if you mess around with AI, what you think about it.
The songwriters, I have a special place in my heart for them. Like, I don't know how it works out for them. Like, there might have to be some legislation there or whatnot. Maybe for artists too. I'm not against it, but I don't think we need to be unreasonable about something that we can't stop. I mean, my attitude personally is like, if 100,000 people want to be out there writing songs with my intellectual property, whatever, my voice, go for it. Yeah, I hope somebody nails one. Yeah, if you nail one, I'll give you a piece of it because I get to go sing that live and we make the majority of our money live at the gate.
Yeah.
Now what's going to happen, there's going to be the other half of the country that are writing songs like, you know, Kid Rock wants to blow Joe Biden, you know, stuff like that, which, hey, I'll laugh at that too. There'll probably be some funny stuff there. I love that one, man. Yeah, right.
What's that you say, Kid Rock? Challenge accepted.
I'm not actually Kid Rock, but you heard what the man said. Make a version of a Kid Rock song with AI and leave a link to it in the comments. We'll send the best version to Mr. Rock. Make America proud.
And now back to our program.
It's another tool. You can pound in a nail with a rock if you want. Yeah, go for it. Or you can get a nail gun. No technology and you're not going to stop it. So let's figure out how to use it. Make life better. There's going to be some adjustments. Yeah, industries are going to lose some workers and stuff, but they'll come back in other spaces somewhere. It's always worked out throughout time.
And I want to be one of y'all.
Even if I'm not.
Would you let me sing a verse or leave me humming in the parking lot?
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