An AI-Generated Country Song Is Topping A Billboard Chart, And That Should Infuriate Us All
https://www.whiskeyriff.com/2025/11/08/an-ai-generated-country-song-is-topping-a-billboard-chart-and-that-should-infuriate-us-all/Open linkView original on discuss.online392
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brother pop music has been bullshit for decades.
Maybe I'm old, but I think popular music peaked in the 90s. Everything has sounded the same since then.
Funny enough, they were playing 80s tunes at Dollar General today. Be hard to say you don't like 80s music as there was plenty of variation.
The problem with this comparison is you're always holding up the absolute best of a decade against what happens to be on the radio top ten right now. Same goes for people who think music hasn't been good since the seventies, or sixties, or whatever. It's one half nostalgia for the stuff that shaped and formed your music tastes, one half survivor bias.
There's plenty of good, new music out there. Some of it is on the radio, some of it is in the streaming top ten, and some of it is in places where you'll never find it. And by the same token, if you actually went back in a time machine and listened to the average radio station in the eighties, you'd hear some absolute dog-shit garbage. It wasn't all Queen.
Problem being, the good stuff is buried under the formulaic stuff. Never said all music has sucked since the 90s, just that mainstream music all sounds the same.
There's another comment here I came to make where that shows 6 modern country tunes all cut together. It sounds like an ensemble of popular singers, sounds like the same music.
Made another comment here that Nashville has nailed the algorithm on selling music. Back in the day, producers and promoters would throw everything at the wall to see what would stick. Now music is a formula, unless you actively seek otherwise.
[Pop/rock] music has been a formula virtually since its inception. Respectfully, AC/DC put out some bangers but also all their songs kinda sound the same. Thriller was successful because it was written specifically to be the most commercially viable album of all time. Hell even in the '60s the formula was very simply "find out what's topping the African-American charts and get white artists to copy it". That's how we got disco, which became so formulaic by the end that its "downfall" was a Worldwide Cultural Moment. If you think today's music is bad, go listen to the top 100 disco hits of any random week in 1978... Probably not going to be a particularly great musical experience.
Every successful counter-cultural movement only lasts a few years before only the esthetic remains. Angry young artists "flame out" or sell out, corpos take over, make a safer formula out of it, and only then does the genre go mainstream.
I'd argue things are actually a lot better now than they were in the Disco era. The fragmentation of culture and slow downfall of linear media means that the formulaic stuff can be much more easily avoided, and it doesn't reach nearly the same level of cultural saturation like it did when the radio was the main way to listen to music. The top charts are still relevant, but nowhere near what they were 20 years ago. Today anyone can pick up a DAW and be their own producer then self-publish to youtube, so who cares if the labels are led by uninspired fuckheads? They're not in a position to bottleneck music production or audience reach anymore.
Country, absolutely, has become a generic mess of slop. Or at least, chart country / bro country certainly has. That's a very specific result of the kind of people who listen to bro country; soulless conservative zombies who will lap up anything that references their preferred cultural touchstones. There's still amazing country music out there but you definitely have to dig deeper to find it.
But as with everything soulless conservative zombies do, you shouldn't let it shape your view of the world as a whole. It doesn't mean that popular music in its entirety, or pop music as a genre, have suddenly become creatively bankrupt. There are artists out there producing incredible tracks. Some of them toil in obscurity, some not only break into the mainstream, but define it.
Saying the good stuff is buried is sort of meaningless, in that its always been true. 90% of anything is crap. That's exactly the point I was making in my previous comment; it's easy to look back at the past and find the good stuff because we've had time to forget all the trash. The present always arrives unfiltered and undiscovered.
And Queen gave us "Radio Ga Ga". 🤮 They can't all be great.
Radio Goo Goo?
My local radio station Kiss FM used to cater to teens. I'm 30 now and they still play mostly the same music they did in 2008. Some new remixes, but -- brb gonna check what they're playing right now. It's past midnight so this might be unfair but they're playing Never Forget You - Zara Larson. 2015.
Yes you're old, there is some really good pop music.
The biggest change is lack of screening by music labels and DJs.
Both are now gone and music is being written for internet algorithms and there is a vast sea of garbage. Effectively, TV shows and movies now act as DJs.
100% fast downhill after the 90s unless you look hard for quality music.
May be bullshit but at least it was made by humans
There has always been bullshit that was popular, but at the same time there were pop artists who made wonderful, interesting music.
I don't know how anyone can't like at least ONE song by The Weeknd.
Country music has been slop long before AI.
When a computer can just toss all your shit in a blender and spit it back out, and it satisfies fans of your genre to this extent, then frankly this is a badly needed wake up call to country music.
It's not though. I don't think many people are arguing it is impossible for a computer to produce "music" that sounds good and is not immediately recognizable as AI generated. Most people are arguing that AI generated music is soulless slop by nature due to the fact it is machine generated.
I suspect that the poster above you doesn't find AI music to sound good and I don't either. I feel that such a large number of people gravitating to the bland generic sonic droll is indeed an indictment of society. Especially of not valuing music education enough.
People who listen to country music aren't exactly discerning.
In general and nowadays, absolutely. But there is so much actually great country music, and I say that as someone who stays FAR away from the genre as it is now and strongly dislike what it stands for and most of the people who like it. I even dare to say that some of the greatest songs of all time are country songs, but it's hard to connect those to what it is now. My immediate reaction to this post was like yours, but it doesn't take much thinking to realise there's more to the genre than the stereotypical modern cringe shit.
It's country music, not Mozart, they are all pretty much the same anyway. It's formulaic and works with a group of people who don't want innovation or change.
A dirt road A cold beer A blue jeans A red pickup A rural noun, simple adjective
No shoes No shirt No Jews You didn't hear that Sort of a mental typo
I walk and talk like a field hand But the boots I'm wearing cost three grand I write songs about riding tractors From the comfort of a private jet
I could sing in Mandarin You'd still know I'm pandering Hunting deer, chasing trout A Bud Light with the logo facing out
Hear that subtle mandolin That's textbook pandering I own a private ranch that I rarely use I don't like dirt
[Spoken:] One verse, one chorus in the bag Now it's time to talk to the ladies I am hoping my Southern charm offsets all these rape-y vibes I'm putting out
Good girl In a straw hat With her arms out in a corn field That is a scarecrow Thought it was a human woman, sorry
A cold night A cold beer A cold jeans Strike that last one
I'm wanting you I hope you're feeling me Subtextually
We go to bed, you doze off So I take your country girl clothes off I put my hands on your body It feels like hay, It's a fucking scarecrow again
Like Mike's Evander-ing Fuck your ears, I'm pandering I write songs for the people who do Jobs in the towns that I'd never move to
Legalize gerrymandering Tolerate my pandering You got a beautiful mouth I got a beautiful
You dumb motherfuckers want a key change?
Thematically meandering Emphatically pandering I got a tight grip on my demo's balls Say the word "truck", they jizz in their overalls
You don't know what land you're in I'm in the land of pandering And I'll be upfront I do what I do 'cause I'm a total fucking cunt-ry boy
Yeah, it was always gonna be either Country or Christian music that got AI’ed first. Music for morons basically
I'm a Mozart hater and have to say Mozart is also very formulaic. Fuck the classical era of classic music, it's boring as hell
thats a weird take. you have consider things in the time they were written which really pushed the envelope for the 1780s. Im still giving you an upvote cause you specified the classical era of classical music, I think my favorite symphonies were written post 1900
I am a classical (non-classic classical) music enjoyer, especially of the late romantic and modern periods. The classic period is just boring on account of being formulaic, and imho Mozarts music sounds incredible boring, even for classic standards. Maybe I'm also biased because one of my neighbours plays Mozart all day every day with an open window and it's slowly driving me insane
I can understand being burned out if something is overplayed, but I would question your sanity if you find a good performance of Canzonetta sull'aria to be boring.
I honestly feel nothing while listening to it. It’s not exciting, it’s too uptight, uninspired. Mozart just wasn’t daring enough. Even for his time, most of his pieces kinda blow.
Edit: Listen to Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 (especially the fourth movment) for comparison, or Prokofiev’s violin concerto No. 1, any of Dvorak’s symphonies, …
Get back to us in 400 years and see how many students in Conservatories are studying Garth Brooks.
If that's how the timeline goes I don't think we'll be making it 400 more years
Its a genre just like most others. They are all very similar thats why they are in the same genre.
Country is about beer, dirt roads and memories.
Rap is about sex and money
Pop is about sex relationships and breakups.
Punk rock is about breakups and depression.
Sure there are outliers but its not like country is the only genre with very similar music.
Metal is about sex, relationships, breakups, depression, addiction, war, religion, politics, freedom, dragons, and dwarves.
My sister uses AI to gen music all the time and what annoys me most is how actually good it is at making country music.
But I mean... It's probably more just because that's a very low bar to pass in modern times because even human-made country music hasn't been good since the 90s. 🤷♂️
It also isn't too surprising since a lot of music, especially from certain classical musicians, was written algorithmically, too.
That doesn't surprise me too much. Have you seen Bo Burnham's Country Song, or SIX Song Country Mashup. All pop country sounds the same.
I was going to post one of those mashups. Nashville figured out the algorithms to selling music. Pop, country, Christian, all formulaic.
American pop country is musically extremely basic. Technically it's music, but you'll have no problems teaching someone that's never touched music in their life how to do it within a couple days. So it's no surprise genAI can mimic this genre and other simpler ones like all the kid's music and nursery rhyme stuff too.
American pop music in general is pretty basic, generic, and devoid of ideas. I mean this was the work of SIX song-writers.
Bakersfield country is kinda decent still but then again Bakersfield is a miserable place so I guess that have to get it out of their system somehow.
This just goes to show how bad country has become.
the last video i watched about this clearly showed the channels blend poorly with ai so is ai production better in the last 3 months or are they doing a manual mix by human hand later?
LOL. As if it was ever good.
Johnny Cash would like a word.
I, too, came to these comments to shit on country music.
While I hate AI generated music, art, etc. I consider it funny to see that they are aiming at the lowest hanging fruit where human slop meets AI slop.
What’s original about most popular songs. They’re usually lyrically simple with a catchy beat and chorus. Something AI would easily be good at and it could churn out mediocre music easily, and a catchy popular tune wouldn’t be too difficult with interation. Country is no exception.
I don't wanna defend pop music too much but "catchy" is one of those aspects of music that's easy to immediately recognize but extremely hard to pull off. In order to be catchy a melody needs to be both wholly familiar feeling but also juuuuuust different enough to surprise our ears.
I'm not saying a generative AI couldn't ever pull it off if you drained enough lakes to do it, but while it's very good at producing the "familiar" it's very very bad at producing anything "surprising".
Plus you can spam thousands of songs easily, one is bound to be catchy and successful, an outlier on the bell curve.
I'm curious what they will do for live concerts, hire a perfomer or AI all the way with some generated video?
According to another article , the only requirement to reaching that position is selling 3,000 copies. It was basically a PR stunt and it worked, since headlines are gobbling it up and spreading the "artist"'s name all over the place.
Thank you! I made a similar comment elsewhere. This was a chart for sales, and because generative AI can't even be copyrighted there is no reason to purchase it. This has publicity stunt written all over it.
First we start by using language correctly. It's not a song. It's a stream of audio data which has been algorithmically extruded out of a massive training dataset (which is most likely comprised of stolen content). We then only perceive it to be a song because the audio data as interpreted by our brain is similar to actual songs we've heard.
Billboard, just like every other organization which offers a content platform, should ban generated synthetic data files. They are taking the place of actual art created by actual artists and it's utterly ridiculous.
It's interesting how the music industry is handling AI versus Hollywood... I don't really hear as much backlash from musicians as we do from actors, which is strange. I suppose actors are much higher profile generally and well unionized.
Yeah, the music industry has always been highly exploitative. There was a brief period of awesomeness in the late 90s/early aughts where indie music found real success through the Internet. How times have changed…so much for the worse. 😭
AI slop is preferred by the common idiot, and country music is enjoyed primarily by the average white idiot. So really these just kind of line up in an unsurprising way.
Country music songs, since 2001, have pretty much been as formulaic as any llm could derive. I’m saddened but certainly not surprised.
🎵I got a beer in my beer and a chevy in my truck, got a dog at the wheel, cut off jeans, truck
Dirt road, back road beer moonlight, red white and blue girl, friday night🎵
Grok, finish the lyrics
Got good news for you! It's an actual aong someone made
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CORANvT8l9A
Hell yeah brother, here's your instant country banger:
I got a beer in my beer and a Chevy in my truck
Dog ridin’ shotgun, got his paw on the clutch
Cut-off jeans ridin’ high on a tan-line girl
Friday night back-road, give that dirt a whirl
Cold one in my hand, moonlight in her eyes
Gravel poppin’ under tires, kickin’ up July
Tailgate down, radio loud, Luke Bryan on the dial
She’s dancin’ in the headlights, man, that country smile
We got mud on the tires, love in the air
Fire in the pit burnin’ red in her hair
Ain’t no city lights gonna steal this thrill
Just a back-road beauty and a boy from the hills
Beer in my beer, heart beatin’ like a drum
She said “Crank it up, baby, till the cops come”
Ain’t slowin’ down for nothin’ tonight
Just me and my girl and these back-road lights
Yeeeewwwww! Drop that in a dive bar in rural Georgia and watch every camo hat lose its damn mind.
Send nudes.
So is it beers, trucks, babes, and America, or "I killed that good for nothing sonofabitch husband and I'd do it again"
Almost, it was the man, and his pesky interference with our protagonists freedom. And guns.
I feel like we all know the answer without even reading the article
Most people are fucking idiots. Thats why ai and corps will prevail.
the worst moment in my life so far is finally realizing that the dumbest person I personally know is only half as dumb as the fool I have yet to meet.
the recursive properties of this paradoxical knowledge almost killed me.
Odd that it's on top of a sales chart when AI music can't be copyrighted, so anyone could just get it for free. It makes me suspect it's presence there might be inauthentic.
That's true (though it may depend on which country you are in). But if "a human contributes creatively to an AI-generated work, such as by writing lyrics or modifying melodies, that work may be eligible for copyright".
You can guarantee that labels/authors will do enough to make sure they can get copyright.
Well, it was definitely going to be within modern country where it became successful and accepted.
TRUCK JEANS BEER GIRL CREEK BOOTS TRUCK
The title sounds promising. I’ll need to circle back.
That's the first lyric. Title is "Every Bro Country Song" by There I Ruined It.
AI's gonna ruin country music. Watch, their trucks are gonna run away, they'll catch their dog cheating and their wives are all broke down.
Country today, actual music next week.
Everything goes to shit. At least the climate is going UP UP UP
Tbh I predicted that a computer would be able to make a hit country song over a decade ago. It's extremely formulaic and the lack of creativity in popular country is almost a point of pride for fans. I'm just kind of surprised it took this long if I'm being honest.
Really? People like the formula?
I guess people like the hallmark channel too so I guess that tracks
I've been collecting music for a while on my hard drive and AI-generated stuff has been one of my worries. I tend to download a lot of vaporwave from Bandcamp (sometimes full labels at a time) and some of those artists have used AI. I'm sure some unmarked AI slop has sneaked into my collection this way and I don't know which albums/tracks.
I'm ok with AI country because it's a trash trite genre anyway.
First, they came for country, and I said nothing
then they came for western, and I said nothing
I listen to nearly all genres and 99% of what gets released is garbage across all genres. Not sure why people are singling out country.
LOL
I couldn't tell the difference
The song in question?
NSFW
(No, not really)
This is the same guy behind both songs though right?
In the end the outcome will always matter.
Look at corporations. They thrive, harm and exploit and all know it and the masses still use their products and services because they are often too good or too monopolistic to not.
The same will be true for AI content. If it's by the masses perceived as good content it will be successful.
And to be fair.... Many human creations that get large traction and fanbases these days are not great quality. The bar to surpass really, really low in many cases.
We humans are simply dumb on average.
I have seen people moved to tears from ai music. To me no matter how good it sounds, I still feel like I’m listening to modem noises. A recent funeral for example, an ai song, written by a thoughtless prompt, filled with bored, tired cliches that could have just as easily been written by a corporate communications department, was the tear filled tribute to my step-mother as she was lowered into the ground.
It was the single most dystopian moment of my life.
Most dystopian moment in your life ... So far.
Yeah, got a feeling it’s going to be a common line of thought.
When all your art does is make people feel but without meaning, don't be surprised when the machines get better at pressing the happy button.
Look, I've used a variety of toys throughout my life, but my hand still works better tha- oh you mean a different metaphorical "happy button." Carry on, then.
That's ... kinda pathetic for the industry, though not surprising for a genre that lost it's heart ages ago.
Someone pointed out to me a while back the main draw of human made art is the effort put in and the genuine connection people make with the artist. When you actually engage with the art, it's provocative and emotional and has that connection. Slop can't do that. It's like empty calories for the soul.
But that argument falls apart for commercial endeavors --- plenty of human made slop also exists and while it may look pretty (or in this case, sound pretty), the artistry is lacking. It's made to top charts, not build a connection. You lack the artist's emotions, creativity, the imperfections that make it genuine, even the backstory behind the piece, etc. All that is art.
County (and other commercial pop) has lacked that for ages. There are genuine artists out there, but marketing and promotional strategies tend to drown them out with slop. No surprise that side is getting the AI overhaul.
But that's why my analogy works; imagine if all you ever got to eat was potato chips. You'd survive, at least you a little bit, but your quality of life would be abysmal. On occasion they might not be too bad but in excess, or exclusively, you'd die young. Yes, it does take effort to consume something better, especially in a society incentivized to continue feeding you empty calories, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try getting a fresh vegetable in your system.
Ironically that also works for the metaphor given just how many Americans have terrible fast food diets, either by choice or necessity. Lol.
It's been algorithm slop since the late 90's, exactly like boy bands. What's the surprise?
An ai generated artist is also topping the R&b charts
Not only is it ai, its country. Honesty, coming from a heavy country family and town... I don't get the appeal one bit.
I say while sipping tea and listening to King Stephen.
I for one look forward to more people recognising slob for what it is, man made or not.
It's long overdue for artists to make something actually artistic.
Pop country has been slop for a long time. Might as well just have robots do it. At least then less douchebags are getting rich.
Eh, the record labels will get even fatter since they wouldn't need to pay an artist at all.
Yeah, but the dickheads like Wallen and Aldean won't be getting anything.
If there is a silver lining to any of this AI nonsense it's that it just might wake some people up to the fact that they have been fed corporate slop for decades. AI changes nothing except it makes slop faster.
It’s probably an improvement to be honest.
I hate to say that my go-to streaming service Tidal also has this song. Hopefully they'll kick out the AI.
Its good-ish. The replication of clapping isn't good enough, so just sounds wrong. It's missing vital frequencies. That goes for every aspect of this Sora slop.
I like real music about real experiences and feelings, regardless of genre. For every McArtist there a real artist who does it from the heart. For every mumble rapper there is an Immortal Technique. For every AI country artist there's a Willie Nelson.
I was drunk the day ma momma got out of prison.
Song billboard charts still exist?
Why is this site cancer? I keep getting errors and it forces a reload.
Nobody in the world except some tasteless US peasants listens or gives a fuck about moronic country 'music'.
It's all bots
It looks like pretty much every one of the commenters agree that if a machine can replace your art, you fucking deserve to be replaced. It's been a long, long time coming for popular country music.
Bo Burnham told us what pop country is, this isn't surprising
Not just that but lately a lot of songs from different genres. Of course they're starting to fill something like Spotify.
Just like Elsagate "color" videos.
Not surprising. Capitalism wants money. Most people don't care about things like "Art" or "long term".
I mean if it is good for what it is, then why not
During summer, in Hungary the top listened Spotify track was an AI song with the title "I stuck a sausage in my ass".
I listened to their tracks, musically they are all decent, actually I liked them better than most pop songs. The lyrics is something like a parody punk band, it could have been an underground hit if played live. Composition is the weak part, some songs are unnecessarily long just repeating the same line, some too short, some using an opera style for whatever reason.
As a bottom line, AI already brings a decent average level in music especially if no lyrics is involved.