With every passing day, the impending AI takeover of music seems to be a step closer.
For instance, on mainland Europe going in at Number 48 in the charts this week is the first completely AI-generated song to chart in Germany. However, Verknallt In Einen Talahon is not the Auto-Tuned pop workout you might expect, but a piece of cheese on a stick that’s a deliberate throwback to the 1970s.
It’s also somewhat problematic. The man who ‘created’ the track is the German producer Butterbro and he admits it was an in-joke that was never intended for public consumption. The title translates as ‘in love with a talahon’.
A ‘talahon’ is a young man, often from a migrant background who wears a specific style of clothing. They're stereotyped as loving working out, martial arts, kickboxing and the like, and in hip-hop videos they’ll be throwing gangster poses and giving it large.
The term originated as a greeting that these sort of guys would use, from the Arabic term ‘taeal huna’ or ‘come here’. But it’s a phrase that in some circles has become something of a pejorative, particularly amongst far-right groups. So, a cheesy shlager-influenced tune saying that you’re ‘in love with a talahon’ is intended as a joke.
Here’s an unofficial video, which illustrates the idea behind the track…
As you can see, it’s humour that’s punching down, essentially. Which is why – leaving aside its AI origins – it’s making a lot of people in Germany feel somewhat queasy.
Butterbro hasn’t made any public comments about the track, but it’ll be interesting to see where this will end up. At present AI music services Suno and Udio are being used in the US by record labels keen to defend their intellectual property. If the labels win, then the AI tide will be held back - or at least regulated - so tech companies have to be open about which tracks and artists they are using to train their AI programs.
But if they lose, then we’re in uncharted territory. Verknallt In Einen Talahon will be the first of many completely AI-generated songs to chart and the line between human and machine creativity could be erased forever. Which is no joke, whichever way you look at it.
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