Last year resurrected the best of the dead for a final, acclaimed hurrah, thanks in large to artificial intelligence. I have to ask: does anybody actually think it’s a good idea?
As we draw to the final days of 2023, each and every major publication, industry corporation and individuals are shaping up their lists for the top songs of 2023. From the Barbie soundtrack (with Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For earning particular favour) to Lana Del Rey, who topped The Guardian’s list with A&W. The sharing of Spotify Wrapped, which showcases individuals personal listening habits such as their top artists, most listened to songs, and number of hours spent listening, become an Instagram-dominating trend has only fuelled the seeming dramatics of the annual debate in recent years. But almost across the board, undoubtedly the biggest name to show itself in the charts this year appears to be mysteriously absent from many of these lists. To alter the opening lines of an earlier hit from the iconic and now half-dead boyband, 2023 saw the first time in 54 years that ‘The Beatles released a single, or should I say, a Beatles single was released.’
It should not come as a surprise to anyone that Now and Then, made up of recorded demo tapes given a helping hand from AI, was a big deal. After all, nowadays it seems that The Beatles are famous first and foremost for being the most famous people on earth. To say that they are more famous for their fame than for the music they made along the way may seem to some a disservice, but I’m willing to risk offending some die hard fans here because, really, even they aren’t going to argue with me and be accused of calling The Beatles underrated. Over half a century on from the band’s official farewell in 1969, while the supposed ‘final single’ of the band appeared on surprisingly few of the lists of top songs from this year, it isn’t hard to find the influence of The Beatles on every other one of the tracks that did. Only a month ago, Boygenius, one of the most consistently highly ranked artists in the end-of-year round up (and my personal favourite), performed on Saturday Night Live in a set so directly inspired by the 4 boys from Liverpool that it seemed almost to be bordering on cosplay. This is to say that quite frankly I really don’t believe you if you say you didn’t know about the final and largely posthumous single that came out in November and topped the charts in the UK. That you managed to go without hearing the dulcet, if slightly Siri-esc tones of John Lennon, the gentle strumming of a beyond-the-grave George Harrison, and a relatively humble accompaniment of an ageing Paul McCartney seems almost equally unlikely. And while the song may not have ultimately had the staying power to earn a place as one of this years best, it is, for a number of reasons, by far the most important.
The posthumous release of work by artists, particularly, it seems, when it comes to musicians, is nothing new. Whether completed or not (and frankly whether good or not), it has now become almost inevitable that, in the event that any artist dies while working on a project, said project will at some point find its way to the public. This is not a new trend. Franz Kafka famously never even attempted to publish anything during his life, with all of his work later published by a friend that saved the writing from being destroyed following the authors death. On the face of it, this practice has some merit to it. I have never read Kafka, for reasons that I will soon expand upon, but from what I have learnt of his writing I am certain the modern literary world would only be worse off from a lack of his influence. Mac Millers Circles is not only one of his most highly and universally acclaimed albums, but many of the songs offer an insight into the struggles of a man who resultantly only appears more deeply human. In songs such as the leading single from the album, Good News, the former rapper and singer vents, only months after his tragic death from an accidental overdose, about a fan base and industry that both disapproves of his drug use and simultaneously criticises is unsympathetic of the mental health issues he has to face head on whenever sober, ‘they don’t like me when I’m down / but when i’m flying it makes them so uncomfortable’. Other examples are everywhere when it comes to the celebrity-centric art industries; from posthumous albums and singles to the published diaries of A-listers such as Alan Rickman. These works often prove popular with fans, and almost always prove fruitful for whoever’s collecting the money made from them. But I can’t help but feel that this trend represents only one thing; a growing lack of consideration for the privacy of celebrity, and a concerning disregard for the importance of consent in the art industry.
For any artist, the agency to curate work in some way, shape, or form is an essential function in creating anything. Whether this is piecing together individual songs to create an album, short story ideas for a plot, or even deliberately structuring the production and release of albums, books or other artworks in order to create a public-facing persona or character (think Ziggy Stardust). The right to curate, to ultimately decide what work is released when, and in what order, is as essential to an artist, and to the artwork, as the actual work itself. An artist or not, most people can empathise with how intensely personal art can be, and it should only ever be an artists decision to share a work with us that entitles us to see it. Yet even when we know explicitly that the artist did not want work shared we often choose to ignore it. This is where I circle back to Kafka who asked a friend in his will to burn all of his manuscript and never let anyone else read them. This is obviously an extreme case, and in many a work had indeed been intended to be seen, or an artist would have wanted a particular piece to be made public after their death. But as with any conversation around consent, the impact, even once the potential victim is in the grave, it is far too severe to presume anything other than that an inability to get consent equates to a lack thereof.
But, as I have said, posthumous publication has gone on most likely as far back as art itself. The reason why Now and Then marks such an important and terrifying turning point in this conversation is not, then, because of the unfinished demos the song was extracted from, but because of the AI technology that was used to complete the track. For anyone who has access to social media, in particular Tik Tok, the use of AI to simulate the voice of a celebrity has been a dominating trend for much of the latter half of 2023. In this context, the intent is usually only for comedy, such as having Harry Styles sing I Like To Move It, Move It or simulating former US presidents curse at each other like poorly adjusted teenagers while battling to the death in a Call of Duty style video game. But Now and Then marks the first time that this technology has been used on a major commercial scale and officially attributed to the voices owner. The song was not released as Paul McCartney and the voices of The Beatles but as The Beatles themselves, despite two of the four members who appear on the track being dead, and the band itself having officially dissolved decades ago. Take this technology out of an exclusively artistic context, and you can make anybody say anything. When Harry Windsor’s audiobook for Spare came out, the recordings of the royal talking about the goings-on of his ‘todger’ and a tube of Elizabeth Arden cream were so bizarre I and countless others assumed the viral clips to be an AI generated hoax. Only by flicking through a hard copy in a bookshop was I finally convinced that the freudian nightmare was as authentic as it was disturbing. This is a scenario in which AI appeared more believable than reality, but this is very rarely the case.
As for the art world, the potential of artificial intelligence to reshape the creative industries are as unknown as they are unparalleled by any technological advancement since the invention of the movie camera. Yet the current conversations around its application seem bizarrely, if not altogether surprisingly, to be exclusively in aid of stagnation. Completing an ancient demo of a once great band is perhaps in many senses the most tame of the potential uses of this technology, as is using it as a novelty trick to make Frank Sinatra sing Hotline Bling. Away from music, Tom Hanks has already expressed his fondness of the idea that similar tech could allow him to keep appearing in movies fifty years after he dies. With AI we can revive voices, faces and scenes from the past, and use them to create something new. Whether we should be doing so, much like the issue of posthumous consent, seems to be a very real issue that very few people are concerning themselves with. After all, should it not be considered that, while John Lennon’s murder in 1980 was untimely, his demo for Now and Then was recorded in 1977, seemingly implying that he had dismissed, or at least delayed for some unknowable purpose, finishing and releasing the track for an entire three years before his untimely death rendered his decision making ability somewhat impaired.
AI is here, and now it is humanities time to decide how to use it. So far, as we revive the dead for the novelty and likely, some day soon, deprive deceased actors of the right to decide what they appear in, it hardly looks like we’re headed for a moral high ground. But we’re talking about an entertainment industry here so perhaps more to the point, if this really is the landscape of a future under AI, doesn’t it all sound incredibly boring?
Pomelo 
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