Sheryl Crow recently stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and it seems like she and Fallon talked about everything under the sun (no “Soak Up The Sun” pun intended).
Crow has a new album coming out next March titled Evolution, which she happily discussed, along with other topics such as:
-Artificial intelligence
-Family
-The Beatles
-Souls
-Songwriting
-John Mayer
And I think I’m still leaving some stuff out of that list. For as short as the interview was, Crow and Fallon managed to cover a lot of different topics.
Most of it revolved around the use of artificial intelligence in the music industry, which is one of the themes of Crow’s upcoming project.
Her and Fallon briefly touched on how The Beatles (who broke up in 1974 and only has two of the original four members surviving) just came out with a new song this week titled “Now and Then.”
Using artificial intelligence, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr took a sample that John Lennon left behind, isolated his vocals, and intertwined them into the song to release their very last new song (confusing, I know).
Though some music fans might find that to be an intriguing advancement, others like Crow think that utilizing AI as somewhat of an “instrument” is a little scary.
Crow spoke about that, and how her new song is based upon the conflict that comes with bringing music and AI together:
“I wound up with a bunch of songs that I’d written just recently, starting off with “Evolution,” which is a song about AI. Speaking about the Beatles…
And it’s been so disturbing to me, I mean, I don’t know how you musicians feel about it, but I did a session the other day and this young songwriter had this incredible song, but she needed a guy to sing on it so that she could pitch to male singers in Nashville.
She paid five dollars, put in John Mayer’s name, and she played it for me and my… there’s no way you could tell the difference. It just blew my mind.”
The fact that computers can so easily replicate the vocals of well known artists is definitely a problem, especially considering that there have already been various examples of artists shutting down songs online that have been created under their name using AI.
Things like telling a computer to produce a song that sounds like John Mayer is one of the issues Crow has with the technology:
“This is what AI can do and it really scared me. Only because, for me, art is attached to the soul.
When you get into something that is so much more advanced than our brains are at this point, it takes the soul out of it, you know? It’s scary.”
You can hear Crow voice her concerns around the four-minute mark of the video below:
