AI in Music: A New Tool in a Long Tradition

Whenever people talk about Artificial Intelligence in music, one of the first criticisms you hear is:
 “AI music is soulless. It’s just cheap, mass-produced noise flooding the world.”

That’s a fair concern — but it’s also not the whole story. To understand where AI fits in, we need to be honest about something: the music industry has been blurring the line between “authentic” and “manufactured” for a very long time. Long before AI, the tools of technology and commerce were shaping what we call “music.”

In fact, these practices are so deeply woven into the music industry that you may have never actually heard an authentic, 100% unaltered performance — even if you were standing in the crowd at a live concert. From pre-recorded backing tracks to pitch correction and click tracks running behind the scenes, “live” music is often a carefully staged illusion.

So, let’s look at some of the ways that has happened.

1950s–1970s: Studio Magic and Hidden Hands

• Session Musicians Replacing Bands: Many beloved records weren’t played by the bands on the cover. The Wrecking Crew in Los Angeles and The Funk Brothers in Detroit recorded entire albums for household-name acts — often without credit.
• Overdubbing & Multitracking: Les Paul pioneered multitracking, letting artists “stack” their own performances to sound like a group. The Beatles pushed it further, layering vocals and instruments into lush soundscapes that never existed live.
• Ghost Singers: Sometimes the singer on the record wasn’t even the marketed artist. Producers quietly substituted more skilled vocalists to make the product sound better.

1980s: Technology Becomes the Star

• Drum Machines & Synths: Bands replaced live drummers with the LinnDrum, Roland 808, or Yamaha DX7. Whole genres — synthpop, electro, hip-hop — were born from machines, not live players.
• MIDI Sequencing: Producers could “play” entire arrangements without touching a traditional instrument, programming them into sequencers note by note.
• Lip-Sync Scandals: From TV shows to concerts, artists were caught mouthing to pre-recorded tracks. Milli Vanilli’s fall from grace in 1989 became the symbol of inauthenticity.

1990s–2000s: The Polished Illusion

• Auto-Tune (1997): First designed as a corrective tool, it quickly became an aesthetic. Cher’s Believe turned the robotic warble into a global phenomenon, and soon almost every pop vocal had pitch correction.
• Comped Vocals: Singers no longer needed to nail one “perfect take.” Producers recorded dozens of takes, then stitched together fragments into a seamless performance that never actually existed.
• Uncredited Backup Singers: Many chart-toppers included harmonies or hooks sung by professionals who were never named — voices you thought belonged to the star.
• Ghostwriters: A-list stars often sang songs written entirely by teams of professional writers, while the “artist” contributed little more than their vocal cords.

2010s: Live Isn’t Always Live

• Backing Tracks on Stage: More and more acts toured with laptops running pre-recorded stems. Sometimes whole instrument sections were replaced by playback, leaving only a vocalist on stage.
• “Features” by File-Sharing: Collaborations between big names were often stitched together across continents, the artists never meeting in person. The “magic” was more Dropbox than studio jam.
• Digital Vocal Cloning (early prototypes): Even before AI took off, producers were experimenting with voice-morphing tech to make one singer sound like another.

2020s: The AI Music Question

Enter AI. Suddenly we can generate voices, arrangements, and even whole songs with a click. And yes — a lot of it is cheap, mass-produced filler flooding streaming platforms. The criticism isn’t wrong. But here’s the key: AI is a tool. It can be abused, or it can be used responsibly.

Just like drum machines, Auto-Tune, or ghostwriters, AI doesn’t automatically make music “fake.” It depends on intent.

• If the goal is to spam low-effort content into Spotify playlists, then yes — that’s the problem people fear. The intent there is a quick buck, not meaningful art. And let’s be honest: chasing money is nothing new. As the saying goes, prostitution is the world’s oldest profession — proof that there will always be people willing to trade quality for convenience, in any era.
• If the goal is to reimagine, reinterpret, and create new artistic possibilities, then AI is just the latest step in music’s long technological journey. From the first multitrack tapes to drum machines, synthesizers, Auto-Tune, and digital workstations, every generation has faced a new tool that critics swore would ruin music. And yet, those very tools helped create some of the most unforgettable songs of their time.

The difference has never been the tool itself — it has always been the intent behind it.

So before moving on, let me ask those who feel that any influence of AI automatically makes music “fake”: aren’t you defending an industry that has been blurring the truth your entire life — if not outright lying to you — all in the name of making a sale?

Where This Long Broken Road Fits

In our project, AI isn’t here to replace human creativity. Dawson’s performances are living proof of a human voice at the core of every song. Sadie’s digital voice exists alongside him — a second perspective, a way of asking: what does this story sound like when told differently?

And let’s be clear: using a digital voice didn’t take a job away from a living singer. Hiring a professional female vocalist for a full album — with travel, lodging, food, studio time, and pay — would easily run $5,000–$10,000 or more. That simply wasn’t possible for an independent project like this. Without Sadie, those versions would never have existed at all.

Instead of flooding the world with filler, we used AI tools to make the music and story deeper. To reveal another side of songs already rooted in human experience.

Final Thoughts

If we’re honest, music has always been a balance between art and artifice, between the raw and the refined. From multitrack tape to Auto-Tune, every generation has faced a new tool that people feared would ruin music. And every generation also found ways to use those tools to create something unforgettable.

Like every other tool that has come before, people will use them to create cheap, meaningless, soulless, and forgettable music, but let me ask you a closing question:

In the end, isn’t the only thing that matters whether the song moves you?