For decades, the country music industry has billed itself as the rough-hewn, rural cousin to the effete sounds of the city. That appears to be going out the window, as more and more country producers embrace San Francisco’s AI over Nashville’s homespun troubadours.
In a detailed reporting on changes in the country music industry, The Vergespoke to a number of professional song-writers, producers, and artists about the rise of AI in country music. Their responses point to a scene that’s changing fast — and leaving human artists in the dust.
The songwriter Trannie Anderson, for example, called the tech “ubiquitous” throughout Nashville, the epicenter of the country music industry. Anderson, who’s written for artists like Reba McEntire, said everyone’s using it: “from entry-level songwriters to the top dogs.” (Sources who talked to The Verge confirmed big wigs like Jelly Roll and Dustin Lynch are being sent song demos with their own voices digitally synthesized.)
Eric Olson, a publisher interviewed by The Verge, encourages country song writers to use AI to come up with song samples, saying it saves tons of time in the work day. “If I can give Suno the last 20 percent and spend more time with my kids, that’s huge,” he said.
While AI tools like Suno can generate just about everything a music producer needs — lyrics, backup vocals, melodies — they’re mainly being used for demo production, according to reporting.
When up-and-coming singer-songwriter Maggie Reaves got a contract from a “major artist” with a one-day turnaround, for example, she wrote the song on paper before throwing it into Suno, according to The Verge. Her publisher told her it was “perfect.”
“This is going straight to her,” her publisher said. In the country music scene at least, demo recording is an important source of revenue for working musicians. Still, though it’s an integral part of the country music ecosystem, it can be expensive. AI offers a cost efficient alternative. “I immediately saw this [AI] could replace that,” Reaves told The Verge.
Considering country music’s history, it’s a rather fitting turn for the industry. As folk music journalist Kim Ruehl observed, contemporary pop-country came to prominence as the commercial arm of American folk music. “The difference is the involvement of big business in the development of the careers of country stars,” Ruehl wrote on the question of country’s folk origins.
That being the case, the drive for efficiency with AI — cutting production costs and increasing profit — is best understood as the next logical step for the industry, not a freak departure from the norm.
There are numerous examples of “industrial advancements” throughout pop-country’s lifespan. Consider the “Countrypolitan era” of the 1960s, in which producer Billy Sherrill refined the process of pumping out chart-topping pop ballads, or the “Hat Act” era of Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson, defined by thematic conformity and the massive consolidation of country radio.
One of the prime examples of this — and arguably commercial country’s point of origin — was the “Nashville sound,” which came to replace bawdry, blue-collar honky tonk with mechanically-produced pop hits. Instead of AI, producers in this era turned to “the A Team,” a stable of reliable session musicians in Nashville, to maximize studio time and streamline popular songwriting formulas. Together, the A Team has contributed to tens of thousands of tracks, laying the groundwork for country music as a commercial industry.
So, while AI might be taking country music to a dark place, it’s really par for the course for a business constantly striving for mass market appeal above all else. Just ask any honky tonk fan.
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