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Sting slams AI’s songwriting abilities

<p dir="ltr">Sting has weighed in on the debate over utilising artificial intelligence in the songwriting process, saying the machines lack the “soul” needed to create music. </p> <p dir="ltr">The former Police frontman spoke with Music Week and was asked if he believed computers are capable of creating good songs. </p> <p dir="ltr">Sting responded that knowing a song was created by AI takes away some of the magic of the music.</p> <p dir="ltr">“The analogy for me is watching a movie with CGI,” he said. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I tend to be bored very quickly, because I know the actors can’t see the monster. So I really feel the same way about AI being able to compose songs.”</p> <p dir="ltr">“Basically, it’s an algorithm and it has a massive amount of information, but it would lack just that human spark, that imperfection, if you like, that makes it unique to any artist, so I don’t really fear it.”</p> <p dir="ltr">“A lot of music could be created by AI quite efficiently,” he added. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I think electronic dance music can still be very effective without involving humans at all. But songwriting is very personal. It’s soul work, and machines don’t have souls. Not yet anyway.”</p> <p dir="ltr">Elsewhere in the interview, Sting weighed in on Ed Sheeran’s recent high profile <a href="https://oversixty.com.au/entertainment/music/decision-reached-over-ed-sheeran-s-copyright-trial">copyright case</a>, in which he was being sued over his 2014 single <em>Thinking Out Loud</em> by Structured Asset Sales, who claimed that Sheeran's hit took elements directly from Marvin Gaye's <em>Let's Get It On</em>.</p> <p dir="ltr">The court and the jury ended up siding with Sheeran, saying they did not plagiarise the song. </p> <p dir="ltr">Sting shared his comments on the case, also siding with Sheeran by saying, “No one can claim a set of chords.” </p> <p dir="ltr">“No one can say, ‘Oh that’s my set of chords.’ I think [Sheeran] said, ‘Look songs fit over each other.’ They do, so I think all of this stuff is nonsense and it’s hard for a jury to understand, that’s the problem.”</p> <p dir="ltr">“So that was the truth, musicians steal from each other – we always have. I don’t know who can claim to own a rhythm or a set of chords at all, it’s virtually impossible.”</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

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Loretta Lynn was more than a great songwriter – she was a spokeswoman for white rural working-class women

<p>Loretta Lynn’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/arts/music/loretta-lynn-dead.html">death at the age of 90</a> marks the end of a remarkable life of achievement in country music.</p> <p>Her dramatic life story – retold in the 1980 award-winning film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080549/">Coal Miner’s Daughter</a>,” based on <a href="https://www.grandcentralpublishing.com/titles/loretta-lynn/coal-miners-daughter/9781538701690/">Lynn’s 1976 biography</a> – made Lynn a household name. She grew up in poverty in a small Kentucky mining town, marrying and starting a family as a teenager before reaching unprecedented heights of commercial success as a recording artist of modern country music.</p> <p>But as a <a href="https://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/music/faculty/faculty-directory.host.html/content/shared/arts-sciences/music/new-faculty-profiles/vander-wel-stephanie.html">scholar of gender and country music</a> and author of “<a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p084959">Hillbilly Maidens, Okies, and Cowgirls: Women’s Country Music, 1930-1960</a>,” I know that Lynn represented more than just star power and fame in country music – she spoke to the concerns of women, especially white working-class women in rural and suburban America.</p> <h2>Speaking up, singing out</h2> <p>Lynn’s rise in the 1960s took place when country music appeared tied to conservative politics. It was a time when Merle Haggard’s “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/california-scholarship-online/book/28551/chapter-abstract/238414028?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Okie from Muskogee</a>,” with its attacks on counterculture, marijuana and draft-card burning, became a populist anthem for the country’s cultural conservatives.</p> <p>In contrast, Lynn’s songwriting continued the legacy of <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-kitty-wells-20120717-story.html">Kitty Wells</a>, <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2016/09/25/country-music-hall-famer-jean-shepard-dead-82/76568704/">Jean Shepard</a> and other women in country music who were willing to speak up about the concerns of American women.</p> <p>Lynn’s songs defied societal expectations by connecting her musical representations of working-class and rural women to broader social issues affecting women across the U.S.</p> <p>She aimed for her music to articulate the fears, dreams and anger of women living in a patriarchal society. It railed against those who idealized women’s domestic roles and demonized outspoken feminists.</p> <h2>‘There’s gonna be some changes’</h2> <p>Specifically, for a generation of predominantly white women in the 1960s and 1970s who did not identify as urban or college-educated feminists, Lynn’s music offered candid conversations about their private lives as wives and mothers.</p> <p>As Lynn <a href="https://www.grandcentralpublishing.com/titles/loretta-lynn/coal-miners-daughter/9781538701690/">stated in her autobiography</a>, her audience recognized her as a “mother and a wife and a daughter, who had feelings just like other women.”</p> <p>She did this through clever and witty songwriting and lyrical techniques that combined the vernacular of her audience with her resonant voice.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the song arrangements of Owen Bradley of Decca Records directed Lynn’s musical talents to a broad audience. He combined the edgier sound of honky-tonk instrumentation – electric guitars, pedal steels and fiddles – with the polish of the Nashville sound by including the smooth sounding vocal harmonies of the vocal quartet the <a href="http://www.jordanaires.net/">Jordanaires</a>, as heard in numerous country, gospel and rock ‘n’ roll recordings.</p> <p>This provided a sound of strength and conviction to accompany Lynn’s bold and forthright songs as she laid bare the double standards of gender roles. </p> <p>With her assertive and resonant voice, Lynn, in her 1966 track “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/loretta-lynn-best-lyrics-songwriting-175002/">Don’t Come Home A Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)</a>,” warns men not to expect women to be waiting at home, sexually available for them after they’d spent the night drinking: </p> <blockquote> <p>Well, you thought I’d be waitin’ up when you came home last night</p> <p>You’d been out with all the boys and you ended up half tight</p> <p>Liquor and love, they just don’t mix</p> <p>Leave that bottle or me behind</p> <p>And don’t come home a drinkin’ with lovin’ on your mind</p> </blockquote> <p>In a similar vein, Lynn, who <a href="https://www.grandcentralpublishing.com/titles/loretta-lynn/coal-miners-daughter/9781538701690/">claimed that her songs about wayward husbands</a> were inspired by her fraught marriage to Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, confronted the “other woman” in songs such as 1966’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough” and 1968’s “Fist City.” </p> <h2>A lasting legacy</h2> <p>Fully aware that her personalized accounts became political messages for her fan base of women, Lynn co-wrote and recorded “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/10/04/loretta-lynn-the-pill/">The Pill</a>” in 1975. It was a rare foray into the topic of women’s reproductive rights for country music. In typical fashion, though, Lynn approached the issue from the perspective of a rural working-class woman: </p> <blockquote> <p>I’m tired of all your crowin’</p> <p>How you and your hens play</p> <p>While holdin’ a couple in my arms</p> <p>Another’s on the way</p> <p>This chicken’s done tore up her nest</p> <p>And I’m ready to make a deal</p> <p>And ya can’t afford to turn it down</p> <p>‘Cause you know I’ve got the pill</p> </blockquote> <p>The song’s sexual innuendos about cavorting roosters and hens incorporated the double entendres and humor of early blues and country, while providing a frank discussion about female sexual pleasure. It also addressed the right for women to take control over their bodies and reproduction.</p> <p>The song came out just two years after <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/113/">the Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade</a>, granting women the ability to govern their own reproductive health through abortion.</p> <p>Indeed, Lynn commented on the Supreme Court’s ruling in her autobiography “Personally, I think you should prevent unwanted pregnancy rather than get an abortion. It would be wrong for me. But I’m thinking of all the poor girls who get pregnant when they don’t want to be, and how they should have a choice instead of leaving it up to some politician or doctor who don’t have to raise the baby.”</p> <p>Her recording “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/10/04/loretta-lynn-the-pill/">The Pill</a>” spoke to married women who wanted to be able to space out their children and prevent unwanted pregnancies so that they could pursue educational and professional opportunities. </p> <p>In interviews, Lynn discussed at length how female listeners flocked to her after concerts, relieved to find a public figure with whom they felt comfortable to discuss birth control. </p> <p>Not everyone was thrilled, though. Male country <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/after-country-stations-banned-loretta-lynns-the-pill-it-became-her-biggest-pop-hit">disc jockeys banned</a> “The Pill” from the airwaves. Nonetheless, the recording became her biggest seller in 1975 and furthered Lynn’s reputation as a spokeswoman for white rural working-class women. </p> <p>Her music also inspired the women in country music who followed her to further explore issues of gender roles. Lynn’s legacy lives on in the music of female country artists – such as <a href="https://www.reba.com/">Reba McEntire</a> and <a href="https://www.mirandalambert.com/">Miranda Lambert</a> – who learned from Lynn how to create music that confronts and triumphs over the societal obstacles that women face.</p> <p>While all of country music will mourn the death of Lynn, it is perhaps her female fans who will feel the loss more acutely. Lynn gave them a social and political voice, and helped make country music a genre relevant to the complexities of women’s lives.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/loretta-lynn-was-more-than-a-great-songwriter-she-was-a-spokeswoman-for-white-rural-working-class-women-191932" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

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Bob Dylan to publish essay collection in celebration of songwriting

<p dir="ltr">Bob Dylan is set to release a celebratory essay collection, dedicated to the art of songwriting by peers such as Nina Simone, Hank Williams and Elvis Costello. </p> <p dir="ltr">The veteran artist began work on <em>The Philosophy of Modern Song</em> in 2010, which is set to contain over 60 essays in which the 80-year-old musician “analyses what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal.”</p> <p dir="ltr">According to publisher Simon &amp; Schuster (S&amp;S), the essays are described as “mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition.”</p> <p dir="ltr">Combined with nearly 150 “carefully curated photos as well as a series of dreamlike riffs”, the collection “resembles an epic poem,” said S&amp;S.</p> <p dir="ltr">Jonathan Karp, president and chief executive of S&amp;S, said in a statement, “<em>The Philosophy of Modern Song</em> could only have been written by Bob Dylan.” </p> <p dir="ltr">“His voice is unique, and his work conveys his deep appreciation and understanding of songs, the people who bring those songs to life, and what songs mean to all of us.”</p> <p dir="ltr">In 2016, Bob Dylan won the Nobel prize for literature, after his lyrics and previous published works have made a lasting impact on music fans and book lovers alike. </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>The Philosophy of Modern Song</em> is set to be published on November 8th, with an audiobook partially narrated by Bob Dylan in the works as well. </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

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