Episode 3 – AI Must Die!

This week I dive in to the AI discussion and call for musicians and artists to rise up. I also shared some new music…

Show Transcript

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck, your podcast for music discovery. My name is Mark, I am an aging Gen Xer, all around music nut, musician, and I struggle to find new music. This week it was a struggle to find decent music in the new releases, and I am going to lay the blame directly at Rick Beato’s feet. If you don’t know Rick Beato, he is a content creator, YouTube, but he is like an amazing person in the music industry, writer, producer. I know he plays guitar and bass. I think he plays drums if I remember correctly as well. Guy does it all, but he was talking about an interview that Billy Corgan had done, and Billy was talking about AI and how AI would start to be used to produce music and lyrics, and basically Rick kind of pulled the string to basically say that it is going to become the tool to generate music, and we are not going to be able to tell because it is going to get better and better. At one point Rick puts in a request into chat GPT and says, you know, write a song in the style of Ed Sheeran, and the AI vomits out some really bad lyrics pretty close to what Ed Sheeran would probably write. I mean, let’s give Ed a little credit, but not much, but you know, it was garbage, but the technology is there and we are at just the beginning of this age of AI created art. And I’m not going to lie, that kind of scares me to think about, you know, when I started playing drums, when I was like 11, 10, and you know, practice and lessons and working with other musicians and bands and learning and growing, and like all that shit just goes away, just because somebody was able to code a piece of software to reproduce what took me years to learn how to do. And I talked about AutoTune last episode, and Rick correctly points out that Cher’s Believe, like back in 89, was the first song that AutoTune was used on, and that was really kind of the precipice moment. That was the first time it appeared, and then it’s all over, like you can’t get away from it. And in pop music, it’s everywhere, it’s like note correction perfect throughout the entire song, and even for musicians, they’re doing pitch correction on guitar and on bass. Drums are being digitally edited, so that the beats are, you know, perfect. There’s something to be said for art that is imperfect. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the studio, and I’ve had to do 15, 20 takes to make sure that I got it right. Because when we were in the studio, and I, you know, admitted last week, we had one instance where our lead singer was kind of under the pitch. We auto corrected it like half a step or whatever it was, and that was the end of it. Everything else on that was produced by us. We overdubbed guitars, I did drum parts more times than I care to admit. I was playing to a click track so that we knew the tempo was right, but that’s still me staying with the tempo. Anyway, I feel like I’m running down a rabbit hole, but I want musicians to stand up to their producers and push back against this idea that we have to have perfection. You know, let us be humans who create art and not necessarily, you know, humans that rely on computers to make this perfect thing that is just soulless and devoid of any meaning. But as a side note, I find it interesting. This is the third episode in a row I’ve mentioned Billy Corgan, but maybe it’s just a trend. I don’t know. Anyway, I digress, good Lord.

So this week I did scrounge up some new tracks. We will get into those in a little bit, but first I want to talk about the top five. If you were listening last week, we’ve changed the top five originally. It was a weekly feature. We’re going to do it every month. So for the month of January, we are collecting songs about places. Cities, states, countries, buildings, mountains. I don’t know. Whatever it is that talks about some sort of geographical element, that’s the songs that I want to hear. So I’m going to drop a little bit of inspiration for you right now. This song was submitted by one of the listeners. She is a Nashville artist originally from Cleveland. I saw her open up for Johnnyswim when they played in Cleveland, and she was great. Her name is Madeline Finn, and this song is called The River. Cool. Again, that was Madeline Finn with The River, and that is your inspiration this week for your top five songs that mention geography. So Cleveland Rocks, Ohio by Crosby Sills Nash. Any songs that mention a place. It doesn’t have to be an Ohio bias. So to submit those top fives, you’re going to send those to songsthatdontsuck. net. You’re going to go to that website in the menu. There’s a form top five for this week. I got to change that, but for now it’s the top five for this week. Go ahead and put your top five songs in, send them my way. And the first episode in February, we will take a look at your top five. We’ll take a look at my top five, and we’ll send out the next monthly challenge. And for the next months, I think we’re going to theme them by month. So stay tuned for that.

All right, a little more housekeeping since we’re talking about the website. Obviously that’s where all the stuff happens. You can find links to the show. You can find all the forms, the interaction stuff. You can find links to all social media. Be sure if you’re listening to this podcast to give us a like, follow it, rate it if your podcast platform does that. This version that you were listening to is the Spotify exclusive version. That one has the music in it. There is a Cliff Notes version that comes out the next day that has no music in it that hits all your other podcast platforms. Good Pods, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeart Podcasts, all of it. All of it, it’s everywhere, but it’s just the Cliff Notes version and you’ve got to go find the music yourself. So rate the podcast, follow us on the socials. I said the links are on the website, but you can find us on Twitter, on Instagram, on TikTok. And now there’s a page on Facebook if that is your platform of choice. So have at it.

All right, let’s get into this week’s music. As I said, it was a tough week thanks to Rick and Billy, but we got there. If this is your first time listening, how I find the music is a process and this is it. So Spotify is my music platform of choice. It’s kind of where I listen to everything. I build a lot of playlists and every week they put out new music playlists on Friday. So on Fridays, I spend a couple of hours listening to the music. Usually starts before work, I’ll make some notes, get my work day out of the way, have some dinner, listen to the rest of them. And I come up with hopefully five. That’s my goal is out of probably 300 songs that I sample, I want to find five that don’t suck. This week was a bit of a challenge, but I got it done. So the playlist, it’s like New Music Friday, New Noise, New Rock, New Alt, Fresh Fines. And every now and then I will look at my personal release radar, but because of all the different music listening I’m doing, that one isn’t as pure as it normally is as far as like artists that I listen to a lot. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. Basically, I go through these playlists. I listen to about 30 seconds of the song. If it doesn’t suck initially, I’ll listen to more of it and I’ll make a note of it. I’ll put those kind of in a notepad and then I will go back and listen to the ones I made notes of, the best of the best. Find their way here to the podcast and I share them with you. Like I said, this week was a hot mess. To get five, I was scraping the barrel, at least that’s the way I felt. But here we go.

The first track comes from a band that had a huge hit thanks to TikTok a while back. This is a collaboration they did with Tom Morello. This is Maneskin with Gossip.

 GOSSIP by Maneskin feat. Tom Morello

So I’ve been hit and miss with Maneskin. I really liked their cover of Beggin. It just was raw and I actually heard the story about why it was so raw apparently. I think they were on tour and they had like one too many and they found the studio and they went and just recorded the song and it just became a huge hit. But the other songs that I’ve heard from them, I haven’t been crazy about. Now, oddly, I love Tom Morello. I think he’s brilliant both musically and as a human being. Like I would love to just sit down with him and talk music because I think it would be fascinating. With Rage Against the Machine, with Audioslave, he could do no wrong in my eyes. His solo stuff, it’s been hit and miss. It’s a little avant-garde at times, at least for me. But I mean, there’s no denying his brilliance. But apparently if you put Maneskin and Tom Morello together, I’m into it. So it was a fantastic, great track. The lyrics, they’re a little silly, but the groove is just killer. That’s unmistakable and Morello’s guitar work is unmistakable. So there you go. That is Gossip from Maneskin featuring Tom Morello.

The second track this week that I found is from a band that’s been on my radar for a while now. And this is Heartbreaker 2.0 from Dirty Honey.

Heartbreaker 2.0 by Dirty Honey

That was Dirty Honey with Heartbreaker 2.0. Now, I first heard Dirty Honey back, I think it was probably like mid, like height of the pandemic, maybe. So I was happy to see some new music from them. Honestly, I mean, amongst their other catalog, it’s not their strongest song. But there’s something about his voice that I really love. And I mean, it’s just great bluesy rock. So if you dig like solid blues rock, just, you know, punch in the gut kind of good stuff and you haven’t heard Dirty Honey, go check their other stuff out. It’s really good. Like I said, this track isn’t their best, but it’s not bad. And quite frankly, I see them as kind of one of the few very solid rock bands that appear to might have some staying power. Maybe that’s a hot take, I don’t know. But I get hard pressed to think of other bands that I would put in that category as far as new bands. And I was playing disc golf a few weeks ago with some buddies of mine and they were complaining about the music. And my one friend was like, well, you have a music podcast. Give me a song to base the radio off of. And I picked Dirty Honey because that was the first thing that came to my mind. And we had a good round. It was good music. So the next song, man, brought back some memories.

But the next song is from De La Soul. And it’s the magic number. Check this out.

The Magic Number by De La Soul

When I saw the title of the track, I was like, no, they didn’t. Did they? Oh, yeah, they did. So if you aren’t familiar with three as a magic number, you are obviously not a Gen Xer. But this song is deeply entrenched in my childhood. And I was really excited, honestly, to see new music from De La Soul. And they are always super smart and super clever. So it did not shock me that this is kind of where they went. I remember when Three Feet High and Rising came out in like 89 and 90 somewhere back there, I was hooked. I was not into kind of like hip hop, but this was just, it was just intelligent music. And so good. So good to have them back in the landscape. And honestly, good to have their music streaming because it was a long time coming. Now, if you’re unfamiliar with De La Soul, go back and check out their early stuff. Honestly, it’s so good. This track is just as smart as their early stuff. But last week, I was talking about how older artists sometimes when they put out new music, it feels dated. This is not the case. This did not feel dated. It’s just not what current hip hop sounds like to me. And quite frankly, that’s a good thing. I feel like some thought went into what they were doing with the lyrics and the sampling. And it was just good stuff. All right.

The next one, the fourth one that I found is a band called The Answer. And the song is called Want You to Love Me. Check this one out.

Want You To Love Me by The Answer

When I was doing the initial 30-second skim of the week’s playlists, the crunchy guitar on this got me right away. I love that fuzzy, warm sound. It’s very 70s. But obviously, it’s an influence, obviously, from where they’re coming. But really great vocal, I thought. Feels really pure. Thanks, Rick, for pointing out the whole auto-tune thing. Oh, man. You made my week so difficult, Rick. Anyway, sorry. But apparently, The Answer put out an album like seven years ago, completely off my radar, because it looks like they’re really big in Europe. They’re from Ireland, if I remember correctly. But honestly, hearing the track was a welcome break. And I welcome them to the US. And I hope you have much success. And I hear more and more music from The Answer, because I was really happy with it.

All right, the last track this week of new music comes from Sunroom, and it’s called Cadillac. Here you go.

Cadillac by Sun Room

This was just a fun track, because it felt like a throwback. I heard Rolling Stones and, like, the skiffle bands of the UK, which gave birth to the Beatles. The funny thing is, they’re from California, so maybe this is, like, the second coming of surf rock, rather than the British Invasion? Who knows. But when it came on this week in the playlist, it was super refreshing. You even get a little bit of, like, a punk rock feel towards the, you know, back third of the song. The track was really fun. So I’m definitely going to check out more of their stuff, just because it was kind of refreshing. Kind of wasn’t straight ahead rock. I haven’t really heard of another band kind of doing this currently. But really, really enjoyed it, and I hope you did too. So featured track this week, Cadillac from Sunroom.

All right, one thing that I started doing this week is, if you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed this. There’s a hashtag that I’m using called Songs That I Missed. And what I did last week, because I prepped on the plane coming home from Seattle, I went through the music again. And I found a couple of songs, maybe three songs that I had missed. And I just kind of tweeted them out and said, hey, these are three songs that I probably would have put on the list. So if you’re not following me on Twitter, make sure you’re doing that. A tag on Twitter is STDSPodcast. But you can find the link at SongsThatDon’tSuck. net. With that, that’s it. That’s it for this week. I hope you had a great week last week. I hope you have a great week this week. Be sure to send in those top fives. Please, please, please. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Appreciate it as always. And until next time, keep searching for and keep listening to songs that don’t suck. See you next week.