Stop being a hypocrite: An open letter to Paul McCartney
Dear Paul McCartney: You said earlier this year that AI taking over the music industry would be akin to the “Wild West”. Isn’t it a little ironic when you’re the one who waved the first lasso?
That’s even more the case in the hellscape that is 2025, where the call from on high is getting increasingly confused between a real celestial body and the supposed authority of ChatGPT. You know this all too well. You think you’re in the good camp, fighting against the AI overlords and championing the organic sense of creativity you are lucky enough to have flowing from your bones.
But Macca, does that really make you the voice of all reason? I think not. Indeed, as much as you like to quickly throw your weight behind any campaign against AI in the music industry that comes around, with your name invariably hogging the headline, you are really not as much of the leader of the creativity crusade as you might like to think.
Sure, it’s great that a status like yours is joining the ranks of a project like the forthcoming Is This What We Want? album, railing against the UK government’s proposed opt-out AI training model for the music industry – yet you’re kind of fooling the masses with that one, aren’t you, Paul?
After all, it was essentially you who gave the rest of the world the green light to use AI in their songs. I can already hear the diehard fans jumping down my throat, trying to feign that this somehow isn’t the case, but the fact still remains nevertheless: from the second you allowed ‘Now and Then’ to be released, using AI to enhance John Lennon’s vocals, you unleashed a sonic beast that will never now be contained.
It may not seem that long ago in our minds that ‘Now and Then’ was unveiled as the final closing of a chapter in The Beatles’ seismic back catalogue. The masses, warped by capitalism and a constant hunger for what they couldn’t have for the previous half a century, dined out on it like the finest champagne. But those bubbles were nothing more than gas in the pipe.
You see, as much as you like to claim that this wonderful technological advancement was the key to allowing you to bring your old mate back to life and give the band one last hurrah, that frankly came at the cost of your own credibility. Do you not also think it’s an insult to Lennon, the man who prided himself throughout his life on his personal kaleidoscopic vision, to artificially alter his legacy through a computer?
The reality is, despite ‘Now and Then’ having only come out relatively recently in 2023, music was different before it hit the airwaves. AI was a creeping threat just registering in the public psyche, sure, but its use on one of the first occasions at such a high-profile level was effectively a permission for the floodgates to open and for industry heads to sit back, relax, and let AI roam free.
I’ll cut you some slack: you might never have intended this to be the case. Everyone also hears the argument that ‘Now and Then’ was not a case of generative AI, which is the major point of concern regarding the technology’s grip on the industry and worldwide governments’ plans for it. But surely in a situation as stark as this, it’s an all-or-nothing game – you can’t really get away with sitting on the fence.
In my eyes, that’s exactly what you’re doing, Paul, and your attempts to seem all high and mighty in your joining of the celebrity anti-AI crusade are a double standard at worst, a guilty conscience manifesting itself at best. You can sign as many open letters, give interviews to as many political talk shows, or agree to be the bearer of as many silent tracks as you want – but you’ve not exactly got a leg to stand on.
To be clear, I’m very much on the side of the cause you claim to support, but my issue lies with you now happily occupying one of the most prominent spaces within it, given your murky track record on AI itself. Yes, you could say that it’s just one of many things you’ve backed over the years, and that you never asked to be the biggest name attached. But surely after over six decades of treading the boards, you’re used to more than a little attention by now.
This is not to say the solution is simple. You created a monster in music that no one realised would enact such a tight and cataclysmic grip. No, you weren’t the evil brains behind AI, but you were the one who showed definitively that it could leach its toxins all over the music industry. You are the titan, the masses are your disciples, and they were always bound to follow in your footsteps.
Paul, your mates might have once told you that you were bigger than Jesus, but you’re not the voice of God. Actually, you’re just a hypocrite. Now step away, and let us clean up the mess you were responsible for creating, before things get even worse.
Sincerely, the rest of the world.
