A song about immigrants whose music, vocals and artwork were generated entirely by artificial intelligence has reached the top 50 of the most listened to songs in Germany, in what may be a first for a leading music market.
Verknallt in einen Talahon is a parody song that combines modern lyrics (many of them based on racial stereotypes about immigrants) with 1960s schlager pop.
The song is ranked number 48 in Germany, the fourth largest music market in the world. Less than a month after its release, the song has 3.5 million streams on Spotify and is number 3 on the streaming platform’s chart. global viral chart.
Its creator, Josua Waghubinger, known by the stage name Butterbro, said he made the song’s chorus by inputting his own lyrics into Udio, a generative artificial intelligence tool that can generate vocals and instrumentation from simple text prompts.
He used the music tool to add a verse after the chorus had garnered a favorable response on TikTok. “I think there is still enough creative freedom in the song to make it a creative project,” the IT professional and hobby musician told Die Klangküche (The Sound Kitchen), a German music production podcast.
The song has attracted attention in the German media not only for the production technology used, but also for its lyrical content. Translated as In Love with a Talahon, the song refers to a Germanized version of the Arabic expression “taeal huna,” which means “come here,” but is now commonly used in Germany to describe groups of young men with immigrant backgrounds, often with derogatory connotations.
The lyrics parodies the classic “good girl falls for bad boy” stories from 1960s songs such as Shangri-Las’ Leader of the Pack. The AI-generated singer’s object of desire wears “a Louis belt, a Gucci bag and Air Max sneakers” and “smells like an entire perfumery.”
When her lover gets angry, she muses, “It’s as sweet as baklava,” probably an attempt to identify him with Turkish culture.
Waghubinger said she wanted to make a song that mocked openly sexist behaviour “with a twinkle in her eye and without discrimination”, but added that her main motivation had been to produce a song that would go viral on social media. “That was the challenge I set myself,” she told Die Klangküche.
But Marie-Luise Goldmann, culture editor of the conservative newspaper Die Welt, said the song walked a fine line between parody and discrimination.
“The simple mix of immigrant youth culture with German high school conservatism will both thrill and offend many listeners,” he said. “The talahon (in the song) does not hide his retrograde gender image, but it is debatable whether he (Butterbro) is trivializing, glorifying or attacking it.”
Felicia Aghaye, a writer for music magazine Diffus, called the song’s popularity “doubly problematic” because “talahon” had become firmly established as an insult among young Germans and Austrians against immigrants.
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“Right-wing groups, for example, use the term to create a spectre and stoke Islamophobia and xenophobia,” he said. “What is problematic is that Butterbro does not seem to understand the negative aspects surrounding the term.
“His career contributes, to a certain extent, to the term becoming more widespread.”
Numerous AI-generated songs in a similar style are circulating on German social media, mixing the sweet sound of 1960s MOR schlager pop with crudely sexualized lyrics.
Music producers are increasingly using artificial intelligence to generate vocals in the style of well-known singers. In 2023, the Beatles released Now and Then, a song that used AI to extrapolate John Lennon’s voice.
A song featuring an AI-generated cover of Tupac Shakur’s vocals was uploaded to Canadian rapper Drake’s Instagram account in April, but it disappeared after the late rapper’s lawyers reportedly threatened to sue him.