Baby, I am a machine

2023 Mix 18: A.I. pop, pop about A.I., pop that sounds like A.I. but isn't. Kylie Minogue, Georgia, RaeLynn, Buffalo Daughter, and Grimes (sort of)

Each week I skim through about 2,000 songs mostly from Spotify's company-curated New Music Friday playlists. Whenever I find 80 minutes worth of music I like, I make a CD-length mix and write a newsletter about it.

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Grimes?

Should I talk about A.I. this week? My strongest opinion is that people need to use both periods in the acronym because otherwise I confuse artificial intelligence with some poor guy named Al.

You should, however, read Jaime Brooks on A.I., w/ riffs on Vocaloid, radio’s transition to the DJ era, Rihanna, Drake, fake Drake, Drake being fake without being “fake Drake” per se, and the recording arts as a protective tool against appropriation and exploitation.

The Last Recording Artist

I think A.I.’s influence is going to be like any other technology — disruptive in a lot of ways we don’t see coming, not disruptive in a lot of ways we currently predict, and the bringer of a bunch of random effects that wind up being a huge part of the “real story” when the dust settles. Should be weird!

Case in point(?): Only one song this week literally has A.I. in it (that I’m aware of), but several sound to me more like A.I. was involved than the one in which it allegedly features prominently.

Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10 // Mix 11 // Mix 12 // Mix 13 // Mix 14 // Mix 15 // Mix 16 // Mix 17

MIX 18: BABY, I AM A MACHINE

1. Georgia: It’s Euphoric

One thing I think we’ll see more of now that A.I. is the buzz-idea du jour is that things we used to talk about being done “by committee” we will just shift to being done “by artificial intelligence.” We have lots of terms for facelessness and soullessness, especially in pop music, when the realistic modes of pop production are always merely shady-cabal-generated at worst. This song sounds like everyone and no one wrote it, in a way that really is faceless. But it’s not unappealing; turns out “face” is not always a criterion I care about.

2. Kylie Minogue: Padam Padam

To me this sounds more like someone constructed a KylieAI than the Grimes song below where the artist has given her blessing to an official…what should we call these vocal tools? Vocaloids? Vocalprints? Veroxes? Vamps? Whatever real name emerges as the standard, it will probably be dumb-sounding and date horribly until we just don’t think about it anymore: podcast, blog, tweet, google.

3. Maya Jane Coles: In2u

Which forms are better suited to A.I.? My first thought is electronic and dance music, but anyone who listens to a lot of dance music, or has tried to make it, knows that it’s a place where the subtleties matter a lot. The line between a banger and a corny hodgepodge of presets can be thin in a technical sense, but there’s a world of difference (and craft) on either side of the line.

I think A.I. will probably excel at churning out music goop — shapeless orchestral atmosphere, fake ambient music, and plodding new age background piano. But I should note that this is already how hacks and fakers juke their stats and strike oil (or keep the oil to themselves) on Spotify. Good riddance to all that; maybe a computer should do it, since the resulting A.I.-generated music probably can’t be copyrighted, which might be useful for sampling.

4. DeVita: Naughty

*

I’ve now been completely out of touch with K-pop for several years running, while still coming across songs I like fairly regularly. Ten-plus years ago K-pop was in ferment, the term I borrow from my scattered reading of communication theory back in grad school. This is a period where reckonings and upheavals are paired with incipient creativity and productivity and excitement, the point where wild new ideas enter before necessarily cohering into new genres and movements.

I’ve noticed that when a genre or a trend is in ferment (as baile funk and amapiano are now, or were very recently), I tend to like the big names and heavy hitters, same as everyone else. But as the genre “settles” my tastes go farther afield, with only occasional overlapping tastes with what’s popular. Maybe it’s just me?

5. Abhijeet Srivastava & Anchal Tyagi: Najariya

My A.I. musings leave me little room to write much about many of the other tracks here lest I breach the email limit. So — a Hindi duet I liked!

6. RaeLynn: What’s Wrong With That?

RaeLynn should be more on my radar since Chuck Eddy called her Baytown EP the best country album of 2020. It’s heavily processed — the weird autotune harmonies! the hi-hat rolls! — and all around a little odd-sounding. If the gender roles code a little conservative (in a winking sort of way), the motivation behind it — abject laziness — doesn’t. (I, too, want a nice strong cowboy to paint my fence for me.)

7. ポニーのヒサミツ [Pony Hisamitsu]: 短い御休み [A Short Vacation]

Country rock, not particularly “fried,” in fact a bit Muppet-y (see below), from Japan.

8. Bebê Kramer: Gauchada Reunida

Accordion! Play, man, play!

9. Blossom Dearie: Discover Who I Am [1968]

Blossom Dearie came up a lot when I put together a Muppets Minus Muppets playlist of songs featuring zero Muppets but are Muppet at heart (or influence on). Spotify’s recommendation algorithm is very good at sussing out the most Muppet-y song by a given artist (David Bowie? “Golden Years.” Jimmy Buffet? “My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, and I Don’t Love Jesus.”)

This is not very Muppet-y. A bit of spy-vs.-spy late-60s psychedelia that makes a compelling argument that every song should end on a moody tritone.

10. Don Niño f. François Breut: Daemon Lover

More ‘60s psych sound. Doors keyboards. French.

11. Kito f. GrimesAI: Cold Touch

This is the one credited to Grimes’s sanctioned A.I., GrimesAI. I could expound on the A.I.-ness of it all but I think I’ve said my piece. Think it sounds unremarkable but sort of rad, and I picked it out of a blindfold taste test, not to prove a point about A.I., so there’s something to it.

12. Buffalo Daughter: Chatbot Baby

Buffalo Daughter are fresh off of my Golden Beat list from the new People’s Pop tournament — on its own dedicated website — for their epic song “Cyclic.” Here they sing about A.I. without sounding quite as artificial as they might be trying to. (So “not fake enough” might be a critique.)

13. AZ-YL f. Ananas: Wieża

Good year for Polish weirdos rapping.

14. Mong Tong: Forest Show

Taiwanese electro-psych from Mong Tong. Check out their Bandcamp.

15. Salami Rose Joe Louis: Dimensional Collapse

Ninja Tune artist gets as much groove as possible out of little fragments of ideas floating around. Doesn’t surprise me that she opened for Flying Lotus.

16. Il Mago Del Gelato: Zenzero

Italian fusion.

17. Will Hofbauer: Crow

London producer bills as an amateur but doesn’t sound like one. Can’t for the life of me figure out which playlist I found this one on, but check out the Bandcamp.

18. Leland Whitty: Windows

Nice jazz album from my albums list. Has the quality of an early morning fog settling onto the city.

19. Núria Graham: Fire Mountain Oh Sacred Ancient Fountain

Another one from the albums list, striking folk-pop from an Irish-Catalan singer-songwriter.

20. Satoko Shibata: どこへも行かないで [Doko e mo ikanaide]

Minor, charming Japanese pop that auto-played while I was looking for another track to round out the mix. Thanks A.I.!

21. Samara Joy: Sometimes Today Seems Like Yesterday

Up-and-comer in the jazz world with an astonishing voice. I suppose I will be a little pissed off if they figure out how to make Nina Simone sing a fast food jingle, even though I like Sinatra doing Lil Jon.

22. Maud the Moth & Trajedesaliva: Perdí Pie

Dolorous atmospherics from Spain. Rare that I have enough time at the end of a mix to indulge something like this. Guess I’m a sucker for moths.

The end! But…what if I were to reveal to you that CHAT GPT WROTE THIS WHOLE NEWSLETTER??

It wishes! Until next time, try to keep your intelligence au naturel.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Kito f. GrimesAI’s “Cold Touch.”