Is AI going to take over country music?

All my exes live in data centers 

Is AI poised to put all singers, songwriters, recording artists, and musicians out of work? 

The internet has been buzzing this week with the news that the #1 song on Country Music Digital Streaming was created entirely by AI, and it is rumored the “artist” is also an AI creation. 

What does this mean for country music, and music in general?

I started listening to country music when I was a teenager, and WIVK out of Knoxville was one of the few stations we could get that did not have a lot of static. My formative years were spent listening to Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley, Alan Jackson, and Eric Church, to name a few. 
Simultaneously, I was discovering the beauty, depth, and richness of classical music, but I’ll save that for a different blog post. 

Over the years, country music changed. Country artists began doing collaborations with pop/rap artists, and it became commonplace for artists to have rap verses in their songs. Many artists (or perhaps the producers) began adding the pre-recorded drum/snap tracks, and soon the songs all began to sound the same. Fewer and fewer artists needed to learn to sing, because the voice could be digitally manipulated to correct the pitch or fix mistakes.

Country music lost its uniqueness because it is easier to use a pre-recorded drum track than to pay a drummer. It is easier to auto-correct a voice than spend years learning how to sing properly. And it is easier to insert prompts into ChatGPT than spend weeks, months, and years exploring how to craft your thoughts and emotions into thoughtful, insightful lyrics. 

Consider this song by Johnny Cash as an example.

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If you just listen to the chorus, it is a peppy tune about how life keeps moving forward. But if you listen to the verses, you will quickly realize that this song is talking about Vietnam veterans who returned home to a country that largely abandoned them, leaving them to deal with PTSD all on their own. 

Or consider this song by Kelsea Ballerini

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This song is a heartbreaking, haunting reflection on the consequences of believing the lies that society tells young women and men.
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 Lies like

“You need to work on your career first”
“You need to find yourself before looking for a spouse”
“Being married will hold you back”
“Having children will tie you down”

Writing these types of songs that tackle big issues without sounding preachy takes time and effort. It takes effort to learn to play an instrument, to sing, to write lyrics, and to use recording technology. It takes much less time and effort to type a few prompts into AI. Plus, the record label saves so much money by not paying singers, songwriters, and sound engineers. 

And sure, the song may sound like this, but it is #1 on the Apple music streaming charts, and isn’t that what really matters? 

Musicians. producers, recording artists- everyone who is in the music industry- this should be a huge wake up call! 

Stop taking shortcuts and producing low quality junk that can easily be duplicated. Do the hard work of learning to play your instrument, learning to sing, learning to write lyrics.

Produce something of quality that cannot be replicated by an algorithm. 


Emily Morgan is a Suzuki trained piano teacher who teaches real people how to play a real instrument in Jamestown, NC. She also teaches a music class of parents and babies.
​Email [email protected] for information about lessons 

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