The Velvet Sundown have been unfairly maligned.
One suspects the near-unanimous hostility towards the band has everything to do with anti-AI sentiment and nothing to do with music. Objective listeners will undoubtedly appreciate the band’s moving anti-war laments, which at times recall Bob Dylan and Country Joe And The Fish (Freedom’s Song and Crimson Parade being among the best).
It is unfortunately true that the instrumentation veers towards unbearably bland Muzak (with the exception of the occasional guitar solo), but this can also be said of Abbey Road, Rumours, and various other “classics.” The songwriting, though, is uniformly strong, and some of these songs (for example the devastating protest song Back Home Never Came) would be masterpieces if covered by a real band with a tight rhythm section.
Far from being a disgrace, The Velvet Sundown represent a new development: This marks arguably the first time that an AI “band” has written a series of songs which are worth listening to. The implications are obvious: if primitive, early stage AI can create songs of this caliber, advanced AI (even perhaps a decade from now) will create masterpieces at alarming rates. Human music will become irrelevant. A constant influx of masterpieces will be created by AI, and the world will have difficulty taking it in.
The Velvet Sundown mark a turning point in the history of music. They are the Chuck Berry of AI: Berry was a pioneer who wasn’t able to create a masterpiece, but he laid down the groundwork for all of the musicians who followed him and did create masterpieces. Future humans have much to look forward to. Long live AI.
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Brett Abrahamsen is a lifelong connoisseur of the experimental and obscure. He is also a science fiction writer (and an amateur philosopher of sorts). He resides in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
