Finally, a New Idea in Rock and Roll

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Earlier this year, a new band called the Velvet Sundown released a song that sounded like it was made by a Benadryl-drowsed peer of the Eagles and Led Zeppelin. It earned more than 3 million streams, a rare feat for an unknown band. Except it wasn’t actually a band—it was (according to an official statement) a “synthetic music project” that had been composed and voiced using AI.

This development raised a sad question: Is rock and roll so stagnant that a bland computer imitation could do a better job than real groups?