Old man shouts at Cloud
But finds an antidote
I read yesterday that the song at the top of the nation’s chart of best-selling country songs is created entirely by artificial intelligence.
To the extent I understand AI, it seems it couldn’t have been too difficult for even the most rudimentary bot to replicate the inanity of songs topping the so-called “country” charts over the past few years. How sleuths were able to differentiate this piece of nonsense from any others littering Nashville these days is a mystery.
If this sounds to you like a retired guy barking, I plead guilty. Never in my life have I felt so distant from Today’s Music Scene. When the Grammys announced the 2026 nominees over the weekend, I had to scroll all the way down to Willie Nelson before I recognized a single song or album up for an award.
The Grammys are pointless, I know, but I still felt old.
Yet older still when the latest issue of Britain’s Uncut magazine beamed into my electronic reading device. I’ve subscribed to Uncut and its kindred Mojo magazine for some two decades now, pleased monthly by music writing a gazillion times better than the tripe coming out of publications on this side of the Atlantic. Here are two magazines that speak directly to my demographic: dusty old music fans who like things the way they were, dammit. Another cover story about The Beatles? Bring it on!
It’s time for the pair’s best-of-the-year editions – I always look forward to them – when editorial teams sift through the chaff to find the wheat from the year gone before. I always find a thing or two to add to my collection.
But.
Who are these people, I wondered as I read through the summaries of their 50 favorites from 2025. Even the summaries are dull – where good music writing can drive me to investigate something I’ve never heard, this year, I get this:
“Ignominy has rarely sounded so glorious as on this breakthrough album from Ryan Davis and his band of Louisville freak-rock lifers, their tragicomic tales of everyday disaster unravelling elegantly over rousing country rock with wild experimental flourishes.”
Maybe the palpable lack of enthusiasm in that paragraph reflects the same-old-same-old of the music itself.
I know I know I know I should give it a chance and try something new. I might be surprised and find a new favorite. Particularly in a year when my old reliables – longtime heroes like Rodney Crowell and Alison Krauss and David Byrne -- released new albums that left me bored. But when glorious ignominy and everyday disaster underpin one of the year’s favorite albums from a publication whose opinion I respect, I fear music criticism is reaching a new useless low and modern music, such as it is, is passing me by.
Instead, I’m nurturing my inner old guy with occasional trips to the local record store, which has joyfully unpredictable bins filled with albums selling for a buck apiece. Hipsters call it “crate digging,” scouring these overpacked boxes for uber-rare nuggets that might fetch a tenfold return on eBay (they won’t) or lost classics that’ll provide some dope beats for this weekend’s d.j. set at the local bar (also, no).
I call it “looking for something that might entertain me.”
And, this past weekend, the bins coughed up a doozy.
Yes, amid the countless Dan Fogelbergs and Mantovanis (and a surprisingly huge number of Moody Blues albums), there was this: The Mills Brothers Great Hits.” My mother’s collection of 78s – which she gave to me just days before she passed away – included the Brothers’ “Paper Doll.” And here, the cover, the label, the condition, the track listing – they all seemed to add up to being worth the dollar with which I was about to part.
By the time I got to the middle of side one, I knew I was on the road to a big Mills Brothers kick. What a great record, what a great sound. Three guys in close harmony and one guitar. Of course that led to searching for Mills Brothers videos on YouTube, adding their Christmas album to my iTunes library, and generally proselytizing to any and all who would listen.
So far, my audience has been limited to my long-suffering wife, who has traveled down this road of Full Artist Immersion with me more times than she’d like to count.
But, dear reader, join me. Check out the Mills Brothers. They’re quintessentially anti-AI, with nary a drop of tragicomic tales of everyday disaster. They’re good for what ails ya.
Coming soon: Tennessee Ernie Ford.
I can totally relate to Full Artist Immersion. Have done that with The Band, Little Feat, The Pogues.
I'm not surprised that goofy AI country song is topping charts. I was reading recently about that fake AI band getting millions of streams on Spotify, and no one cared they weren't real. There's always a large segment of society that treats music as a disposable product, and are willing to just accept lowest common denominator art.