Singer David Gray fears being haunted by lifeless artists’ music from past the grave
The crooner reckons record companies will soon use to make new albums with famous pop stars who have popped their clogs and ‘civilisation is under threat’
David Gray fears being haunted by dead artists bringing out new music from beyond the grave
Singer David Gray fears being haunted by dead artists bringing out new music from beyond the grave.
The Sail Away singer has predicted that record companies will use artificial intelligence to make new albums with famous faces who died years ago.
David, 57, moaned: “Music is always under threat and when sampling came along, it was considered like some kind of slight on music making but now we accept it’s actually highly creative, and you can make another piece of music out of a sample in a wonderful way. It’s entirely the nature of the tribute and how you respect the thing.
“But if you use AI just to generate the most mind-numbing sort of horses**t, then obviously it is a threat and will just use other people’s ideas.
“The idea of it being used as an ultra sampler, so that people that are dead, like James Brown or Nina Simone or whoever – you know, you could feed their entire works and vocalisms into this super computer and then give it new lyrics and chords and see what happens and create new work by a dead artist.
“I see that that’s going to happen. I think that will definitely happen. They’ve sort of hinted at already that you can do that with the powers that they’ve got.
“These tools could be unbelievable. You know, it’s super sampling. It’s remarkable. It’s like anyone who’s used ChatGPT, I mean, I don’t use it, but my wife’s used it. She says, ‘David, it’s amazing, and it never judges you.’ Everything’s under threat. Civilization’s under f***ing threat.”
David kicks off a UK and Ireland tour next month which includes Belfast’s SSE Arena on June 16 and said he will rail against such tech and make music the way he has always done.
He added: “Before everything was driven by thumb power, it was a sort of word of mouth thing. The technological landscape is always changing and it’s always a threat to creativity.
“If you give AI as a writing tool, as a production tool, to all the major labels who are just like mega labels now, I mean, there’s only a few of them left. How will they apply it? Will it be fair?
“I’m sure my ideas have been plundered already. It’s too late. Stable door has been left open and the horse has gone.
“It’s interesting because when I’m writing and I’m making music now, I’m using gridded music less and less.
“I’m entirely trying to do it in a way that AI could never do it, so out of tune and out of time, let’s get back to that.”
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