No this is not an April Fools post, but coincidentally today is actually my blog's 12 year anniversary I think...? Wow. Anyway, in recent months, AI ABBA songs have been becoming more and more prevalent on the various social medias, namely YouTube. These AI ABBA songs range from "covers" where Agnetha and Frida's voices are basically slapped over existing vocals from other artists, or people are creating their own original ABBA songs with the ladies' vocals inputted over the creator's own vocals.
And I have a few thoughts on this, but I was hesitant to actually post this because I have this fear that the creators of these AI ABBA songs will see this post and learn to get better... and that's not what I want.
First of all, similar to what Bjorn himself stated in a beautiful post regarding AI, AI is becoming more and more powerful and it's impossible to not utilize it in some way. I personally enjoy brainstorming with ChatGPT for ideas for my own books, and asking it questions I have about certain subjects and careers that I cannot possibly have any knowledge about and I have already extensively researched and couldn't find the answers I'm looking for (knowing full well that ChatGPT is not necessarily accurate.) How I use it I think only enhances creativity, and there are definitely other ways to assist creativity as well. However, at this time, when it comes to AI art, whether it's music or art, AI is simply stealing people's work by being trained on it without the original artist giving explicit permission, and it is becoming a bigger and bigger problem.
Considering the fact that ABBA themselves have always been very protective of their image, likeness, and rights, the fact that someone can simply take Agnetha and Frida's voices and put it onto someone else's song and say it's an ABBA song, or generate completely new "unseen" ABBA images seems just wrong.
Now I don't really wanna go more into the morals of AI because it's all so confusing, but I am more than happy to talk about why AI ABBA songs are just in general bad, haha, and I think it will take a very very long time before they'll ever reach the level of actually sounding like ABBA. And here's why:
A lot of these so called AI ABBA songs are generally created by someone taking pre-existing vocals from like, let's say I Know Him So Well by Chess, and using AI vocals that are trained to sound like Agnetha and Frida and placing them over the original vocals. The result is you have a vocal that sounds kinda like Agnetha Faltskog but the phrasing, accent, and singing style is that of Elaine Paige, and same for Frida's general sound but sounding too much like Barbara Dickson because it is Barbara Dickson. And that simply doesn't work. Don't get me wrong, I too want to hear Frida and Agnetha singing I Know Him So Well, but simply overlaying their vocals over the song doesn't get you that ABBA sound. In fact, so far the creators of these AI songs simply don't understand how to capture the ABBA sound.
For starters, Agnetha and Frida, and Benny and Bjorn as well, each have their own unique timbre, accents, phrasing, and styles, that no one has managed to mimic for the base vocals. I've heard AI songs where the singing sounds like a modern day pop-star, not even singing in Frida's range, with Frida's voice overlayed on top, and it doesn't sound like Frida. The production of these tracks also don't understand that to get that ABBA sound is not just Frida singing with Agnetha singing the same melody or harmonizing alongside her. To get that ABBA sound, you need to have those layers upon layers of vocals stacked on top of each other, and you also can't not include Bjorn and Benny's harmonies in there as well. I talk about this enough times already but if you compare the Spanish recordings of ABBA songs, done solely by Agnetha and Frida, to the original English language versions that have Bjorn and Benny mixed in there, they just don't compare. (Not saying the Spanish versions are bad btw, I just prefer the fuller ABBA sound that the originals have.) And these AI ABBA songs can't even sound like the Spanish versions!
I believe a lot of these "original" AI-ABBA songs are likely written by AI as well. Considering the general public who aren't obsessed with ABBA like I am already reduce ABBA in their minds to "fun disco group" who "sang the songs from Mamma Mia", and assume that ABBA are just one of those stereotypical 70s groups with the stereotypical disco sounds with satin and sequins and flared pants, it doesn't surprise me that AI doesn't know what ABBA truly is either. And the result is, dumb lyrics, simple song structure, songs with crazy long instrumental intros that take up the whole song... And even worse because ABBA are obviously just the "Dancing Queen" band, the dumb AI lyrics like to reference ABBA songs in their lyrics, like having them mention the words Dancing Queen in the lyrics, because ABBA would totally do that, referencing their top hits in their songs.
Now common themes, phrases, subjects, is absolutely something that ABBA have done, as I was delving into in my song analysis series I was doing on this blog last year before getting severely burnt out, but AI doesn't understand that. So AI is simply incapable of understanding the nuances of an ABBA song, Benny's ability to compose unique melodies, or Bjorn's unique lyrical style.
(Slight side note, but I was actually thinking recently how ABBA's Keep An Eye On Dan is basically ABBA's attempt at making a "stereotypical" ABBA song. The song is an upbeat track, with kinda sad lyrics referencing relationship drama, namely a divorce and the tough feelings associated with co-parenting, having a character's name in the song: Dan - similar to Bobby and Bobby's brother, Suzy from Suzy-Hang-Around, and the many many more mentioned throughout ABBA's discography, and the nod to SOS, a previous hit, at the end. The only thing that would make it more stereotypical ABBA would be if they referenced an animal of some type or used "feeling blue" as an emotion, haha.)
Also another thing that bothers me is a lot of people when generating these AI ABBA songs literally just apply a stereotypical 70s or 80s sound to the song, assuming that ABBA are just your stereotypical 70s/80s band, so the music just doesn't sound like ABBA at all. Plus it's even funnier when they write a song specifically titled "80s style ABBA song", but the vocals they trained their AI models on are how Agnetha and Frida sounded in the early 70s. That's like having Agnetha in her Hasta Manana or SOS singing style, singing One of Us from the Visitors album, and that historically couldn't happen because both Agnetha and Frida's vocals and singing styles had matured and changed throughout ABBA's career.
Considering a lot of these AI songs are likely created by amateurs, the songs just sound bad in general. Bad mixing, with the vocals placed all the way at the front of the song while the rest of the instruments, which are all digital btw and as a result can never get that full sound or even come close to the wall of sound effect of ABBA's actual songs. And like they kinda sound like, or even worse than, the simple instrumentals that ABBA tribute bands have their Agnetha and Frida sing along to, and like, simply having an Agnetha and Frida singing and dancing to an ABBA song doesn't capture the ABBA effect.
Anyway, although these AI-ABBA songs are generally bad, there are people in the comments who genuinely think that these are "new", "rare", or "bootleg" ABBA songs. And while these tracks definitely don't sound like ABBA now, in time people are going to get better at making these AI ABBA songs without ABBA's permission, and it's just doing to end up ruining how people remember ABBA. People are really going to be tricked into thinking these mediocre crafts are part of ABBA's history, ruining how ABBA want to be remembered. Which is why I think it is extremely important that artists' rights and copyright are preserved, and the usage of their work to train AI models is stopped now.
Now, while I don't personally like to listen to ABBA covers or human-written ABBA-inspired songs, because as an ABBA purist I will only happily listen to ABBA, but there is nothing wrong with those. With human intelligence, it's entirely possible to create something in the style of ABBA without infringing on ABBA's rights at all. I think this video by Marti Fischer is the perfect example of how to do it right.
So yeah, those are my general thoughts on ABBA and AI music. And if there are any AI music creators who are reading this post DON'T YOU DARE USE THIS POST TO ENHANCE YOUR MUSIC TO MAKE IT SOUND BETTER I DO NOT WANT YOU TO DO THAT!!!
