The Velvet Sundown. Not Bad. Not Real. (Music Monday)

When AI rock gets surprisingly catchy

I drove home from the beach on Saturday with The Velvet Sundown's second album - more on that in a second - and for about 20 minutes, I was actually entertained. Which says something, considering this "band" exists entirely in the digital realm.

So lots of quotes here. It’s “their” “second” album. I guess.

Look, I'm not taking this seriously. This is generic 70s-ish rock that I probably wouldn't bother with if not for the whole AI angle. But tracks 2 and 3 - "As The Silence Falls" and "Ash and Velvet" - are genuinely catchy enough that they made it onto my drive-around-summer playlists. That's more than I can say for half the "real" bands releasing music these days.

There's something oddly perfect about AI-generated classic rock. It hits all the familiar chord progressions, throws in the expected guitar solos, and delivers exactly what your brain thinks it wants to hear. It's like having a really sophisticated jukebox that can manufacture new versions of songs you feel like you've heard before. Hey that drum fill sounds a little Ringo. Hey that chorus sounds a little Eagles.

The problem kicks in around track 7 or 8, when the algorithm starts repeating itself. That's when you realize you're listening to a very expensive computer doing its best impression of what rock music should sound like, rather than actual humans with something to say.

Rick Beato did a great breakdown on YouTube, pulling apart the stems and explaining how the drums sound a bit shallow. Now I can't unhear it - there's something just slightly off about the rhythm section, like it's mimicking the feel of real drums without quite understanding why they should breathe the way they do.

But remember: this is AI music at its worst. As bad as it's ever going to get. Five years from now, we'll probably look back at today's AI rock the way we look at those early auto-tune experiments - charmingly primitive.

So yeah, I added two tracks to my playlist. They're catchy, they fit the summer driving vibe, and honestly? Some days you just want to hear something that sounds like classic rock without having to dig through Spotify's "discover weekly" algorithm to find it.

People are getting all irate about Spotify royalties something something and also real music integrity something something. Hey, The Monkees weren't all that real, and The Archies were a second level of non-realness (the Monkees didn’t want to record Sugar Sugar - oops - so the creators created an even more fake band.)

By Sunday morning, there were already fake (faker?) Velvet Sundown knockoff albums polluting Spotify with similarly named “bands.” Oh what a spiral that is.

Is an AI band all that far removed from sampling an old record? Is it all that much different from Greta Van Fleet totally not copying Led Zeppelin? Let’s be honest, is Lady Gaga not doing Madonna 2.0?

The Velvet Sundown doesn't exist, but then again apparently they do. For 20 minutes in my car yesterday, they sounded pretty good. That's either the future of music or the end of it, depending on how you look at it.

Wouldn’t it be great if this was a double hoax and they ARE real and pretended not to be just to get our attention?

Either way, I'm keeping "Ash and Velvet" in rotation.