The five best songs about AI
In 2024, it almost seems that the presence of artificial intelligence has rapidly sprung up into the conscience of our everyday lives, with its uptick in use in workplaces, education, and even music. Getting AI software to write your shopping list probably does look as though it’s pretty innocuous, but when you then start doom-scrolling the news and find out all the ways it’s becoming increasingly sinister, it’s enough to give even Big Brother the creeps.
Although AI deceptively seems like a recent phenomenon, especially in terms of its use in music, we can actually track back over the past 30 years and beyond to find songs that eerily forebode our current landscape before their time.
It makes sense that AI was first noted for its possibly dangerous outcomes in the world of music and film. If there is any set of people on earth most worried about the evolution of computer-enhanced life then it is the creatives among us. The thought that a bot may be able to simulate the genius of Pablo Picasso, Stanley Kubrick or John Lennon with just the right prompt is enough to send shivers down your spine.
While it is unlikely that the swell of AI will ever subside and a reality of a life with the machine learning fast outpacing our own a very likely outcome in the next five years, we can still revel in art. If there’s one thing the computers haven’t quite got right, just yet, is how to make a killer song about AI.
The five best songs about AI:
‘Computer Love’ – Kraftwerk
Released in 1981, Kraftwerk’s work clearly shows that the German group must have had some window to the future when creating it. Well, to be fair, that could be said for much of their discography, which spans the past 50 years and has pioneered the entire genre of electronic music. The Düsseldorf natives adopted a trademark style of ‘robot pop’, merging electronic sound with familiar rhythms to make the unconventional sound palatable to mainstream audiences.
We see this on ‘Computer Love’, taken from the album Computer World, in the way it juxtaposes synthetic melody with monotonous lyrics: the choruses simply bleat the words “Computer love” over and over, while the verses depict dark images such as, “I call this number/ I call this number/ For a data date/ For a data date/ I don’t know what to do/ I don’t know what to do”. Its simplicity is terrifying; dystopia runs riot in the real world.
‘Paranoid Android’ – Radiohead
Speaking of dystopia, we turn to one of its finest examples in musical form – ‘Paranoid Android’, taken from Radiohead’s iconic 1997 album, OK Computer. “Please could you stop the noise?/ I’m tryna get some rest/ From all the unborn chicken/ Voices in my head/ What’s that? (I may be paranoid, but not an android)/ What’s that? (I may be paranoid, but not an android)”, Thom Yorke wails in the song’s introduction.
It’s a lament of the rushing departure towards insanity brought about by AI and the technological generation. It’s searing and unsettlingly evocative, a precursor to the band’s later experimental material, but somehow, it keeps winding you in for more.
‘Virtual Insanity’ – Jamiroquai
If it’s Radiohead that got landed with the task of telling us the world’s going to end, then it’s Jamiroquai who got the fun job of bringing the party. Infused with a funk-pop beat that you can’t help but dance along to, it’s one of those tunes that lulls you into a false sense of security because it’s so fun that it can’t possibly be about anything bleak, right? Well, wrong.
Frontman Jay Kay has us bopping away while he’s secretly considering the dark state of the world, covering genetic modification, capitalist overconsumption, and existentialism, to name a few. But fret not, because he cheerily then lets us know that, “Now there is no sound/ For we all live underground”, paying homage to the song’s source inspiration of the Japanese underground city in Sendai.
‘Wire (Leaping Dub)’ – Massive Attack and Mad Professor
From Jamiroquai’s slickness you then find ‘Wire (Leaping Dub)’ by Massive Attack and Mad Professor, which is… a massive mess, to be honest. However, in this context, you can re-evaluate your perception of what ‘mess’ is because it actually gives rise to something brilliant.
Take the notion of ‘dub’, for example – in this song, it can be seen as innovating and bridging the distance between dub of the electronic reggae genre and dubstep, the sparse South London dance style that emerged in the early-2000s. Erratic beat and a dizzying soundscape combine to make you feel as though you’re in some sort of fever dream. Still, this primitive example of contemporary electronic music really showcases the future potential of technology that would arise in the industry.
‘Robot Boy’ – Linkin Park
Finally, we arrive at 2010’s ‘Robot Boy’ by Linkin Park. Admittedly, it’s not an obvious choice; it has the most human element of any of the songs on this technologically inspired list, but in other ways, that is perhaps the thing that makes it most unnerving. The band sing in complete unison, detailing the depths of depression that a boy experiences, as a result, becoming numb to the effects of the world akin to a robot: “You say the weight of the world/ Has kept you from letting go/ And you think compassion’s a flaw/ And you’ll never let it show”.
Not only a disturbing insight into how the human condition can come to reflect AI and tech entities, but a sad foreshadowing and reflection, perhaps, of the events in frontman Chester Bennington’s life that led to his suicide some seven years after this release.
