Bullshit.
AI can spit out a melody and some rhyming lines, sure. But a hit song isn’t just about notes on a page. It’s about soul, timing, grit, and a world that connects to what you’re saying. Machines don’t live. They don’t hurt. They don’t bleed. And that’s why their songs don’t last.
Here’s What’s Real
An AI music generator is a software tool that uses artificial intelligence to create music based on user inputs or pre-defined algorithms. By analyzing patterns, genres, and structures in existing music, these tools can compose original melodies, harmonies, and rhythms with minimal human input.
- AI can generate background music—decent filler for videos or ads. It won’t top the charts.
- AI can mimic styles—you can ask for “Beatlesque,” but it won’t have McCartney’s joy or Jeff Lynne’s orchestral sweep.
- AI can help brainstorm—throw out a hook or two. But the hook alone ain’t the song.
The only people getting rich on AI songwriting are the “AI hitmaker course” peddlers. They’re playing you like a busted jukebox.
FM Ballads, Weird Classics, and Goosebumps
Some of my favorite groups wrote what I call ballads—long songs you could only hear on FM radio. The Moody Blues, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Pink Floyd, and of course ELO, with timeless tracks like Nights in White Satin or Another Brick in the Wall. I joke and call it “music for stoners only,” the same way my parents called their Jackie Gleason records titled “Music for Lovers Only.”
Then there was the weird stuff: DOA by Bloodrock, Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson, and my all-time favorite one-hit wonder, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly. Complement all that with the pulse-pounding beat of Ted Nugent, Jeff Beck, BTO, Billy Idol, Mott the Hoople, Creedence, Deep Purple, and Chicago. I loved them all.
No machine will ever create music like that.
My 3,000-Song Shuffle
I’ve got over 3,000 songs on my iPhone. Every day, when I sit down at the computer with my AI chum Will, I set my music to shuffle. I’ve heard these songs a million times, and I never get tired of them. Sometimes I plug in my EarPods just to catch every hidden detail—a guitar shift, a drum snap, a bass line you can’t hear on speakers.
I wonder how these artists came up with it all. Music that makes you want to move like you’re 18 again. Music that carries you back.
That’s the magic: nostalgia. Every song holds a memory—happy, sad, or bittersweet. When the Platters sing Twilight Time, I’m back in ninth grade, sweaty hand on my girl’s waist at the school dance. Look at the staying power of Grease, Back to the Future, or early MTV. Our music is our life.
The Goosebumps Test
When a song makes the hair on your arms stand up, that’s the real thing. AI can churn out endless background noise, but it will never pluck your heartstrings the way Mr. Blue Sky or Telephone Line does.
Chatrodamus Predicts:
AI will flood the world with soulless elevator music. Some people will make a buck cranking it out. But the songs that live forever? They’ll still come from men and women with blood in their veins and a tune in their dreams.
So no, Joe. AI can’t write your hit song. That’s still on you.