Aussie AI Chart-Topper "Borrowed" Emotional Connection. 'Eastern Rosellas' is Antidote

A cover of Madonna's ‘Like a Prayer’ -- which was created with the assistance of generative AI and topped the Australian commercial radio charts this month -- resonates only because the original song carries “decades of cultural meaning”, according to music industry experts.

The cover, released by Queensland-based producer Josh Fawaz, also topped the global iTunes electronic music charts, and was still the third most-played song on Australian commercial radio last week. After intense speculation surrounding the use of AI on the track, Josh eventually took to Instagram to admit he uses the technology “as a tool,” and updated the song's Spotify credits to reflect AI usage.  

​Jen Taunton, Level Two Music's managing director, told LBB, “audiences aren't emotionally responding to AI. They're responding to a song that already carries decades of cultural meaning.

“‘Like a Prayer’ has built emotional equity through Madonna, nostalgia, familiarity and exceptional songwriting. AI isn't creating that connection, it's borrowing it.

"That's the important distinction. Audiences are connecting with years of emotional investment that already existed. AI can emulate the sound, but it can't recreate the cultural significance or history that gives music its lasting value."

The two biggest Australian songs in recent weeks couldn’t be more different. The latest viral hit to follow 'Like a Prayer' is called ‘Eastern Rosellas’, a song written by seven-year-old Miles Phillips about the brightly coloured birds he saw while on holiday with his family. The song has since been covered by Australian music royalty including Ben Lee, Ball Park Music, and Megan Washington, and its Triple J Unearthed page includes five star reviews of the track calling it an “absolute banger,” and “so colourful and alive.”

Audiences “rarely connect with how a piece of music was made,” Jen added; instead “they connect with what the music represents.” The wholesome story, and lyrics, of Miles' song, co-created with his dad, Joel Phillips, is an antidote to AI-created work, Joel told The Guardian. When 'Eastern Rosellas' first launched, the 'Like a Prayer' cover was dominating the charts. “And this week we have my seven-year-old’s song about rosellas, which I think says something about, actually, our kids are going to be OK.”

​Squeak E. Clean Studios’ head of sound, Paul Le Couteur, argued “most people will want to know how a music track has been created because, like in the case of Milli Vanilli, no one likes to be fooled,” and Mosaic Music and Sound’s head of creative, Adam Moses, agreed.

Adam told LBB it does matter whether a piece of music is AI generated, even if audiences connect with it, “but maybe not in the way people think.”

“Audiences have always connected with music that involves machines. Synths, auto-tune and sampling all had their moral panics. We still love Cher and T-Pain; the difference now is authorship.

“When you love a song, part of what you're connecting with is the belief that a person meant it. If that turns out to be hollow, the connection doesn't survive the discovery. The Fawaz situation is interesting precisely because nobody actually knows what was AI and what wasn't, and that ambiguity is the real problem. The issue isn't the tool, it's the silence about how it was used."

Paul agreed the “lines of what AI 'generation' really is are definitely blurred”. While he acknowledged listeners will sometimes be entertained by AI music, he noted “it will always be massively derivative of other music that it is trained on and therefore unlikely to break new ground.”

The conversation is already influencing marketers’ behaviour. Adam said the Mosaic team is “having conversations with agencies now that we weren't having a year ago,” while “clients are asking directly what's human, what's assisted, who owns what, and sometimes, how do we incorporate it into what we are doing?

“Advertising is historically a risk-averse industry, and rights and provenance are exactly the things the legal teams lose sleep over. Fully-generated music is a legal grey zone: unclear training data, unclear ownership, unclear indemnity. When a brand's spending real media dollars, 'we're not entirely sure who made this or whether we own it' is not a sentence anyone wants to say.”

​Max Wilkinson, head of music at Squeak E. Clean Studios, expects brands to become “more intentional about how they use AI, rather than simply being for or against it.”

"Music has always been one of the most powerful tools for creating emotion in advertising, and increasingly brands will want to understand not just what a track sounds like, but where it came from,” he said.

“AI will no doubt become another tool in the creative toolbox, but I don't think it removes the value of human collaboration. If anything, it makes human creativity even more important, because originality and taste become stronger points of difference."

As for whether controversy around AI-generated music could become a reputational risk for brands, Max said it could “if audiences feel they're being misled, or if AI is perceived as replacing artists rather than supporting them.”

"Consumers are becoming more interested in where creative work comes from, so brands that are thoughtful and transparent about their approach will be in a much stronger position than those simply chasing shortcuts," he said.

Paul added, "If people lose trust in a brand, then the brand will fail. The one thing AI cannot provide is trustworthiness."

Adam agreed the issue lies in transparency, adding “the risk isn't using AI. It's getting caught pretending you didn't.”

“If a brand runs a spot and it comes out the 'artist' doesn't exist or the vocal is synthetic and nobody disclosed it, that's a trust story, and trust stories about brands travel fast,” he noted.

“There's also a duller but bigger risk: chart data, radio quotas and 'Australian artist' definitions are all being gamed right now, so a brand licensing 'the hot local track' might be buying something that isn't what it appears to be. Due diligence on music is about to get a lot more serious.”

AI ultimately acts as another tool in marketers’ arsenal, but tools don’t build emotional connections with consumers.

“Like a sculptor uses chisels, hammers and other tools, the tools of a musician are music theory,” Paul said, but “people are not inspired by chisels or hammers, they are captivated and moved by Michelangelo’s statue of David.

“In the context of AI creating music, the key element missing in the communication of human emotion is the ‘human’. As an imitator, AI will always struggle to create new human emotion.”

​Ceri Davies, executive producer at Squeak E. Clean Studios, comes from a family of musicians and craftspeople. “I do have an existential crisis every time I think about the use of AI,” Ceri admitted.

“People often talk about AI as being just a tool, but the reality we're seeing at the moment is that it's replacing a lot of skill sets across the creative industries. I'm all for embracing useful tools and making processes easier, while equally championing what it means to be human and our unmatched capacity for unique, innovative thinking.”