"This Is Really, Really Wrong": How AI Is Quietly Replacing Human Creativity in Music

The Counting Crows' bass player Matt Malley sent Mack Maloney a test. Using an AI song generator called Solo, Malley typed in lyrics, selected a genre and vocal style, and within five seconds had a fully orchestrated country version of a song. Malley's reaction was immediate and uneasy: "This is really wrong." The technology exists now, it works, and it's already producing hit songs by artists who don't exist—entirely AI-generated performers with AI-generated music videos climbing the charts.

The Committee That Replaced the Garage Band

The conversation traces a clear throughline: the slow erosion of human creativity in popular music didn't start with artificial intelligence. It started decades earlier, when the music industry began optimizing for certainty over inspiration. Keyboardist Tom Brislin, who played with Kansas, told the hosts that in earlier eras, "every band started, it was a garage band who made it." That path is now effectively closed. Today's artists are "picked from either the Musketeers or some Korean K-pop show." The organic pipeline from basement rehearsals to stadiums has been replaced by corporate selection and algorithmic discovery.