If you listen to “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire, you might notice there is a slight hiccup in the bass line near the beginning of the song. Thanks to modern technological developments, you won’t hear such minor flaws in 21st-century pop music. But you also won’t hear songs as good as “September” on the radio. 

Music changed at the turn of the century. New software tools like Auto-Tune opened up a whole new world of sounds for producers to explore. At the same time, the most popular musical compositions began to shift their form. They became simpler, melodically and lyrically. 

Many musicians have embraced these trends. But if they want to keep their jobs, they need to reverse course. Artificial intelligence could be the next hot artist to dominate the charts, composing the same simple songs without the input of human artists. When record labels don’t need real people anymore, they won’t bother using them. 

The only way to change the trajectory is to change the market by supporting artists who are breaking from what is trendy by crafting raw, authentic, and creative records and showcasing musical ability rather than mere proficiency with software. 

Records have become robotic. If an audio track deviates even slightly from the tempo, quantization can eliminate the error by moving each note into the precise place at which it belongs. If a vocal is flat or sharp, Auto-Tune can solve the imperfection by artificially adjusting the pitch. If a sound engineer can’t produce a sound naturally, he can dive into an endless catalog of effects.

These quality-improving tools can help. No one wants to hear a mistake in a song when there is an easy fix. But artists are letting these modern wonders make up for bad music. Imagine taking a novel with a bad plot, fixing all the spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, and then sending it to print. That is essentially what audio engineers are doing with today’s hottest hits.

Popular music is neater now than it was in the last century but it is also simpler — the melodies, the chord progressions, and the lyrics. If you listen to the discographies of the most popular artists in the world, it is troubling that many of their songs can be played using four chords or less. Talented artists like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran dominate the charts but with music that often doesn’t showcase their talent.

They put out music that is nice to play at parties or in convenience stores. The lyrics are basic but catchy and the melodies are simple but fun. You don’t need to pay attention to what is going on in the composition to appreciate what the artist wants to give you. This kind of art has its place in the world, but it’s nothing to admire, and we should expect more from the best of the best.

Now the combination of simplicity and artificial effects we have come to expect from these musicians will be all too easy for AI to replicate. 

“At first the labels are gonna be like, ‘Oh this is great, we have this new source of revenue that we never knew was gonna exist,’ and the artists are gonna say the exact same thing,” predicted Rick Beato, a popular music expert on YouTube. “Until the record labels are saying, ‘well why do we even need to share the money with the artists, we need to just create our own artists.’”

Programs like ChatGPT can already write simple lyrics, melodies, and chord progressions and the technology will only get better. AI has the tools to reproduce basic songs and since that’s what’s popular, people won’t think twice when it does. 

But technology isn’t forcing us in this direction. We can enjoy all the benefits of modern production without sacrificing the beauty of the substance. We can have songs as well-composed as those from centuries gone by while still enjoying the surface-level repairs modern technology affords.

If that’s what we want, we have to start expecting more from musicians. We need to support artists who care as much about the song as they do about the production and we need to refuse to support those who do not.

There are many musicians who don’t fit the modern mold. They use complex melodic structures and poetic lyrics to craft their compositions. Give them a listen — artists like The Brook & The Bluff, Gregory Alan Isakov, and Hozier. 

If musicians like these become the standard for popular consumption, labels won’t have any choice but to keep the musician front and center — at least for the time being. Current AI is simply not capable of recreating the quality of music these artists are putting out.

As consumers, we can determine what is lucrative in the music industry. We can make sure the best music is still worth making. 

The muse should speak not through computer software, but through human beings.