Review: A Hit Country Song Made by AI
Should it matter whether a song was made by a human or a machine?
"Walk My Walk" topped Billboard's country chart for digital song sales in November. The song opens with a deep, soulful hum, followed by a mellow, slightly twangy voice telling listeners that he's been beat down but doesn't stay low. What follows is a decent bluesy ballad, full of country clichés ("every scar's a story that I survived") but with an appealingly catchy beat and a rich, expressive drawl.
The artist, Breaking Rust, is no country music veteran or Nashville songwriter. "Walk My Walk"—along with the entire album it appears on, Resilient—was made with generative artificial intelligence, according to Billboard.
As approximations of human beings go, this is top-notch. The song and others like it—AI-created music attributed to "Cain Walker" got up to No. 3 on Billboard's digital sales chart—brings new meaning to the debate about separating the art from the artist. If people like listening to "Walk My Walk" (and though I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it, I do), should it matter whether the song was human- or machine-made?
There's something instinctively off-putting about the idea of AI-made music, some vague ideal of authenticity or humanity violated. But in an era when so many pop and country hits are already overproduced, autotuned, and studio-driven, "Walk My Way" works as yet another ephemeral hit churned out for mass consumption. AI-made tunes may never fully supplant truly heartfelt and human-created music. But Breaking Rust's chart victory shows that for many listeners, AI is already competing effectively with the merely human.
