Singer-songwriter James Blunt has taken some pretty harsh criticism in his time, but his latest bruising came not from a keyboard warrior, but AI.
Speaking to Squeeze’s Chris Difford on the I Never Thought It Would Happen podcast, the singer-songwriter revealed that he was left feeling “totally humiliated” when, just for a laugh, he asked AI to write a lyric in the style of James Blunt.
“Well, the truth is, either AI comes up with something very, very generic, or my lyrics are just absolutely mundane,” Blunt says of the results. “AI has totally humiliated me whenever I’ve gone and asked it to impersonate myself. So it’s taught me, if anything, not to use AI and [that I] must do better.”
To be fair to Blunt, his suspicion that the kind of lyrics AI tends to come up with are rather generic is probably not without foundation, and he sounded a warning to musicians thinking of using it. He argues that it’s “your flaws, feelings, and mistakes that give songs character, and AI can’t do that at this stage.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the famously self-lacerating star also admitted to feeling “slightly uncomfortable” when writing songs in the company of Ed Sheeran. This, he says, is down to the speed at which Sheeran writes, with Blunt confessing that he ended up feeling like his secretary.
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