I was sent a link via WhatsApp from one of my Fintech buddies. It was a YouTube link to Kurt Cobain singing Hole’s “Live Through This,” and I initially thought, “Neat!” My WhatsApp friend retorted, “Scary.” 

And I listened to it again. And again. I read a lot of the YouTube comments, which included:

“I don’t know what to think right now.“

“I’m not sure if I love this or hate it.“

“This is the stuff of nightmares, removing the soul and emotion in music and trying to recreate it with an algorithm…”

And one: “Kurt singing “Wild Boys” by Duran Duran.”

That last one was the one that hit me because then I then found loads on YouTube. The late Freddie Mercury covering “Hey Jude.” Madonna covering “Billie Jean” Loads more Kurt songs… Paul McCartney doing “My Sweet Lord.” 

If you search “AI remixes” on YouTube, well enjoy.

It’s happening so quickly and becoming high on the public radar in our new Generative AI world.

There is some, perhaps some good. Taking artists’ vocals and remixing them to a younger version of what they would have sounded like… that maybe might not be bad if the artist is okay with it (and still alive to consent to it.)

But what hit me as I was scouring the “AI Remix” universe was coming across… Jeff Buckley. Someone did AI Remixes of Jeff Buckley as if Kurt Cobain wasn’t bad enough.

Jeff Buckley

Jeff Buckley was born in Anaheim, California, and sadly only recorded one studio album, “Grace.” 

This is one of my favorite albums of all time (hey, David Bowie considered “Grace” the best album ever made and said it would be one of his ten “Desert Island Records,” so I’m in good company.)

It was Mojo Magazine’s best album of 1994, ahead of the likes of Oasis’ “Definitely Maybe,” Nirvana’s “Unplugged in New York,” Blur’s “Parklife,” and Neil Young & Crazy Horse’ “Sleeps With Angels.”

His version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” will remain the most haunting, beautiful piece of alternative indie music ever made – it makes you shiver. He sounds gorgeous. To help put her to sleep at night, I used to play “Hallelujah” to my daughter when she was little, singing gently with my ukulele (I sing like Jeff Buckley, right?!).

This is “Hallelujuah“.

At just 30 years old, Jeff Buckley went swimming on May 29, 1997, fully clothed into a channel of the Mississippi River. He drowned, and his autopsy showed no signs of drugs or alcohol in his system. The death was ruled an accidental drowning. It’s a weird, mysterious tragedy that still bothers me today.

I’ve digressed, but I found an AI remix of him doing a cover of one of my other favorite artists, Lana Del Rey. “Norman F—–g Rockwell.”

It sort of upset me, or at least hit me in a way I didn’t expect it to. Even more than Paul McCartney, this was a vocalist who ranged (at least) four octaves, but here he, singing this song as an AI creation, sang… one? And it was a resemblance to him, but it’s an unhinging one, partly because I love both the original song and him.

This is not Jeff Buckley.

McCartney

I’ve kept listening to AI versions of Paul McCartney. One was doing Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” and another to Don McLean’s “American Pie.” But after listening to these for a few days, I realized that this sounded like Paul McCartney, but they don’t. They lacked… him.

Just him.

There was a lack of empathy—an attempt to reproduce him, perhaps, but an absence of him. 

Now, as a McCartney fanatic, I could tell over time. But at first, my wife thought some of these were McCartney covers. But not recent Sir Paul – a younger one. It struck me how easily an innocent bystander could be, well, perhaps deceived.

I’ll take the AI versions as fun interpretations and playful re-recordings of the original tracks, which make them sort of interesting. But I’m stopping there. Stopping. Really stopping.

Hey, guess what. The actual versions are the best, and Billy Joel’s performance beats AI Paul’s because it has a heart. Sorry AI Paul.

And no one can touch Jeff Buckley.

Chris Garrod, May 29, 2023