Should AI be banned from music charts? And, Pope Leo's fashion statement

In 2002, Ryan Wedding was an Olympic snowboarder at the top of his game. "Ryan's style is really gunneted and gold." And in less than a minute, it slipped away, but he continued to chase the high. "Ryan James Wedding, he controls one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in this world." I'm Michelle Shepard and from CBC Podcasts and the Toronto Star, the most wanted Olympian. "Available now on Amazon Music." This is a CBC Podcast. Look, as long as I've been hosting this show, we've been having conversations about how AI is impacting the music industry, but now it feels like that question is more urgent. And that is because now we have the first AI-generated song that has managed to hit the Billboard Hot 100. So today on the podcast, how the AI music landscape is shifting. I'm Ella Meen, up to my mood, and this is "Comotion," "Rolly Pemberton" is here, Laura Dawson is here, welcome back to "Comotion," both of you. Hello. How's it going to everybody? It's nice to have you here. I regret to do this to you, but I think the place for us to start this conversation is right here. Okay, so that is a cover. Version of Madonna's 1989 classic "Like a Prayer," it was produced by an Australian DJ named Josh Fowas. I really enjoyed "Rolly," immediately sort of beginning to laugh. As that began to play, I'm going to get to you in just a moment. More DJs doing a high energy remix of a song, but it existed for a while, but that's not a new thing. Why is this one getting all this attention? Well, this one, I mean, as of this morning, it's had 50 million Spotify hits, and it hit number one on the National Radio Airplay Chart in Australia really quickly. So that generated suspicion because everybody's wary of viral hits these days. And as it turned out, and you can kind of tell from some of the audio tells like the very clipped at certain invocals and stuff, that Fowas didn't credit the AI Music Generator that helped him make this song, everybody thought it was him and his uncle. And when he was called out, he said he used a quote, "like a tool," and then he just wanted to provide his listeners with, quote, "good music," which I mean, like a prayer, obviously, their play. Since then, he's retroactively added a credit for, quote, "generated AI," one word. And that credit also appears on his new single, which is pretty much identical to take, but it's on MGMT's electric feel. But the more important thing is that last week, the Australian Recording Industry Association said that songs had to be, quote, "substantially human-made" in order to qualify for the country's album and single strike. Now what "substantially" means? I guess we're going to find that out. I just write off the bad I just want to say, I hate that we are living through this timeline. I do not want to be having conversations about what "substantially human-made" even means, but we'll give them to that in just a moment. So that's happening in Australia. In North America, there's been a lot of conversation about this song. Why is this happening? It is L.A. Rapper, Phoenix Flexed, the song is called, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. That song is called, "Rubbers," it is when Viralist Summer became the first AI-generated song to actually make it onto the Billboard Hot 100. Look, first, Phoenix was like, I listen, definitely not AI-made, and then a lot of internet people came up with people like, hey, these are all the tell-tale signs of an AI song. And then actually some convincing evidence that used a program called Trebleau to produce a track, and then he came clean about using it. Rolly, what are those tell-tale signs of a song being like, oh, I think that's AI, buddy. Well, I think the first thing was this person has a British accent and Phoenix Flexence from L.A. So that was a big tell. That's a good start. He's a rapper. He's from Shoreline Mafia and he had never sung before. So yeah, this whole major stylistic shift, this isn't like an 808s and heartbreak thing where there was an interpersonal turmoil and he was like, I just need to sing and do something different. Through the tool. It's like, no, he just randomly, it's the first song he's ever put out as a solo artist. There's nothing about this that is related to his music. Yeah. That's a good tell-tale sign of the day. That's a useful one. Okay, does the fact that this song actually ends up making it onto the Billboard 100? Does that make you go, I'm worried. I'm worried that this is going to open the floodgates and this is going to be a lot more of this and it's going to get onto the charts because it managed to make it onto the charts. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's the whole point of this experiment with Treblow and Phoenix Flexence is to demonstrate that they, through a lot of trickery and confusing the audience, have managed to get a song on the charts. But is it still there? It's not still there. It's still off the charts already. Yeah. So I'm like, well, it's not a lot of lasting power there at all. Yeah, but time was more. Yeah, I can made it to the Billboard 100. That's a nice feather in your cap, you know what I mean? It's a little different now because of the way that streams are sort of calculated and like the way that streaming is a very light touch interaction. But yeah, I think that it's definitely lost its luster in the age of 25 songs by one artist making the Hot 100 at the same time. I really regret to make this whole conversation worse, but we got it because it's interesting that you have this AI-generated tracks from Joshua and Phoenix Flexing, and they're doing big numbers. But then you have this. ♪ She more money in affection ♪ ♪ We was dancing in a dark, took a chance with no direction ♪ ♪ With the dice and play my heart out ♪ ♪ You just gambled with my love ♪ ♪ Yeah, you gambled with my love down ♪ So I want to note the vibe shift between "Rubbers" which you guys are going to release a little bit delighted by. In the song that we were playing right now, which is called "Effection", it is from Tyga, who is a singer/rapper. He made an entire album with AI-generated tracks. The reception to this album has been unlike any I've seen before. "Pitchfork" gave it a 0.0 out of 10, failed to crack the album charts. A lot of the negative reactions have been focused on how Tyga ended up using AI. Morrow, when you consider all these different examples here, what does that tell you about the public's willingness to actually say, "You know what, I do want some AI music." Yeah, I think people might like songs that are made with AI at first, but often once they do, they're like, "Oh, it's over, no," because they don't want to be moved by a machine. Also, why do all the AI-generated songs sound like the '80s? Why did they call back to that decade? That's an interesting thing to think about. But I feel like it dovetails with a couple of other points right now in music. There's the recent backlash against some viral acts, like Stella Lefty, who as the singer-songwriter, she had to retroactively give "No a Con" songwriting credits for Boston. And since her album came out on Friday, more songs have been picked out for references to the Chicks and other country artists. And I feel like having AI make music also invites the idea of having AI prop up listener counts, like I was saying earlier, which seems like the falsehoods just pile up. And I think it's a problem with music discovery right now. A lot of people are just in the endless shuffle, and they're not getting the casey-caseum front-and-ounce and back-and-ounce with little factoids with the artist that tell them that they're real. And I think that when you hear a song or a snippet of it, you're like, "Oh, I'll file that away." And then you find out that it's AI, you kind of feel cheated, right? You kind of feel like they evoked an emotion from me against my will with a computer. I think it's just tied up with the general suspicious mood in the states and probably around the world. Electric bills are going up, food's getting more stuff added to it, city councils are making late night data center deals. Listeners just being annoyed by AI generated music, I think it really is kind of a, it sums up a lot of the anxieties and anger that are percolating right now. Before we started rolling, Mora, you said, "Welcome to the Age of Suspicion." I was like, "I don't want to be here." I mean, having said that. I don't either. It's a little bit too late for that. I should say, really, what I find kind of fascinating about all of these sort of evangelists for AI right now is like, you've got significant names who've made their careers in hip-hop, who have been like basically evangelists for using, you know, like your own talents for making music. We're talking about like Tim Beland, we're talking about Rick Rubin. Like there was, last week, there was a big feature on Dr. Dre and Jimmy. I have, I mean, there's something about people who have said, "We are innovators in this genre," who are now saying, "You know what, why don't we do a little bit more AI in music?" These are people who really did pioneer producing records with the most very hands-on kind of way. What do you make of that shift, that idea? Like those are the people speaking on behalf of AI. Well, what did they all have in common? If you think about Rick Rubin, Dr. Dre Tim Beland, where did they all have in common in 2026? Tell me. They're washed. Ooh. A relevant artist. Yeah. We're very groundbreaking in their moment, right? And also just very singular, you know, independent ideas that they came up with, right? Yeah. And then when you look at Tim Beland and says, "Who's really into Suno," he works for Suno, right? Which is one of the AI companies. One of the, one of the general AI companies. Yeah. And in an interview, which was kind of advertorial and rolling so on that red, he's talking about how, you know, he didn't have any ideas. You had major writers block and then Suno was like his, he called it his baby, baby Timbo and his baby thriller and it just really reignited his creativity. But for someone like Timbulent who redefined pop music and hit on and just really just a singular force in music till he has lost his confidence to that point where he has to use his AI. It's really sad. Yeah. That's a statement. The statement is like, Hey, there was a time when you had something to say. And maybe you feel like because you don't have anything to say right now, this tool is giving you the, maybe the facsimile, a feeling like you have something to say. It's like he's lost his skill of discernment. Right? You can't tell whether something's good or bad. So let me just go to the machine. Yeah. That is a painful statement to hear about somebody who has actually given us so much, you know, like classic lasting sort of art. Mora, we started this discussion by talking about, you know, like Australian music industries move to maybe ban AI-generated music from his charts in recent weeks. We've also seen Apple music billboard announced that they're going to be identifying and tagging music that is AI music on their platforms. Does that feel meaningful to you or does that kind of feel more like a, like a sort of a cosmetic district? I think we're going to have to wait and see because that substantial is such a, you know, sort of malleable term. And I mean, I'm really just TBD about so much of this stuff right now because, you know, a few years ago, would you have thought that like MLB would be partnering with a gambling site? No. But they're doing it now. And I just, you know, but it all, I think it all comes back to you to just people want humanity. And, you know, the outpouring of love for Dolly Parton last week, certain, and Tim Curry. People want to respond to humanity and real, realness and like, you know, also AI records are kind of boring and not as exciting like last week I talked to Shibuzy. And he just put out a 20 track concept record about like a young woman out for revenge. And it's like, OK, like he could have put it, you know, been like, OK, can you just make like 10 more of our song tipsies and that's, we're done. But like he worked on this project for seven years and like, you're not going to get that kind of like creativity and interestingness from putting in prompts. Yeah. I love that Shibuzy record also. It's so good. Like that's something that has just been baking in the background this whole time while he's had a bar song tipsy, go to number one, be the biggest song of the summer, that one summer. That encourages me. Or it gives me a little bit more life, you know, 30 seconds to your role that you put out a book earlier this year about the music industry called Ways of Listening. It includes this cautionary chapter about AI and music and the sort of the introduction of AI into music. When you look at how the stories played out over this summer, which happened so quickly, what does a future of AI music look like to you right now? I think what I didn't expect to happen this quickly is the companies seeing the reaction of the audience. People are not liking this AI really and they're trying to claw back a bit of the AI. They're trying to have disclaimers, they're trying to spotify, is marking AI-generated artists now. You go on LinkedIn, you can press a button and be like this seems like AI slop. It shows that it's not as bullet proof as maybe they thought it was. I think that is a small mercy. I would like to see how that plays out over the rest of the year. So really appreciate your time, you guys. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Yeah. Yes, of course. Royal Pemberton is a writer and rapper also known as Kate Asweapon, who's with me right here in the studio. His new book is called The Ways of Listening. Mara Dawson is a freelance music journalist in Boston. In a world where the news feels bigger, louder and harder to make sense of, Canadians need more than headlines. Hi, I'm Karen C. Olin, news reporter and host of The Big Story Podcast. From world shaping events to the everyday stories that spark debate, my team and I will explain what matters and why it matters to you. We're here to help you make sense of the news and give you the context you need for those kitchen table conversations trusted, Canadian focused, curious, listen to The Big Story, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Aluminum to Mahmoud and this is commotion and okay, so we were going to talk about how the Pope made Vanity Fair's best dress list, but there's significant breaking news in the world of fashion and Vanessa Freeman is here to talk about it. Vanessa Freeman is a fashion director and chief fashion critic for The New York Times. Vanessa is good to see you. Let me ask you first. What is going on? Nice to see you too. It is a little manic at the moment. So John Galliano, the very influential British designer who was head of duor for years and really made it the sort of famous name it is and then was fired for anti-Semitic comments in 2011, it was supposed to be the subject of the Met's Big Costume Institute show next year, sort of made him only the third living designer to ever get a solo exhibition at the museum and he has just pulled out over a growing public backlash against his history of comments. Tell me, what's your reaction to this news? Like, you wake up, you see this news, what's your reaction to it? I mean, in a lot of levels, it wasn't really a surprise. You know, what had been a surprise was the museum's decision to have the show. Not because John isn't very talented, not because he didn't merit it, not because he has no tone for his past behavior and studied with study Judaism with rabbis, but just because given the tenor of the times, given the fact that there is a kind of growing wave of anti-Semitism both in New York and across the country and the world, it seemed like a very weird decision to celebrate someone with this baggage at this moment, especially for an institution like the Met, which is so important, culturally in New York. When the news first came out that he was sort of being given this honor, I think people are expecting a pretty significant reaction. I feel like the reaction was even bigger than it actually was. What's your take on that? There was a period of silence. I think there was a moment when the Met thought, okay, people understand this. You know, they had done a fair amount of damage control before the announcement came out. They had brought in a lot of influential rabbis. They had brought in the head of the Anti-Defamation League to meet with John, to hear his story, to hear his, to judge his atonement from his own lips. And those rabbis came away, you know, they told the New York Times, satisfied, you know, they felt that he really had done the work and deserved a second chance. But there is a difference between giving someone a professional second chance with John his head, right? He was creative director of Maison Margello for 10 years. He's been re-embraced by fashion and giving him, you know, what is arguably the biggest honor that a museum can give a fashion designer, one that's only happened with two other designers. And just in the last week, I think the damn broke and a whole bunch of city politicians, as well as, you know, very important donors to the museum went public with their dismay over this. And their sense that this was really a serious mistake and something the museum should not be doing. And I think the public outcry just became untenable for the museum they couldn't go forward. So that's, that's the thing that's happening in your morning, this morning, but that was my morning. That was all right. That announcement happened this morning at about 8 a.m. But before that announcement, our original plan was to start this conversation with a pretty significant new server to the Vanity Fair just put out their annual best-dressed list. It's the combination of, you know, most fashionable and influential people of the year. You've got a few people on there who are not a surprise, like Harry Styles, not a surprise, Spike Colleen, not a surprise. The list will use not a surprise. Then the person that I don't think I expect to see on the list is Pope Leo, the head of the Catholic Church. Okay, let's talk about that because that's why we're having you on. What was your reaction to seeing Pope Leo on this list? Well, I would just like to say that Pope Leo was on our 2025 The New York Times Styles list of 2025, most styles, just people of the year. So we actually beat them to this point, so I was like, oh, yeah, of course, you're just like following in our footsteps. So, you know, it's not a surprise. It's not a surprise. Yeah, not a surprise. I mean, I will say that, like, when I see Pope Leo, right, he's often photographed wearing baseball caps. I've seen him wearing a lot of Nike's, and I kind of go, wait a minute. Why am I not on this list? This is my first reaction. But maybe number two is, how would you describe Pope Leo's fashion choices? Well, I think, you know, like, every Pope is extremely aware of their presentation and their image, right, pageantry, clothing, regalia, is part of the work of the Catholic Church, right? This part of the way the church denotes hierarchy and has for centuries. So the fact that this Pope is making choices related to his clothing, when he knows that will be publicly viewed, is completely in line with tradition, right? It is absolutely him doing his job. And I think, you know, what he's saying is, you know, I am the first American Pope, right? Yeah. Here's the, like, signposts of my nationality, right? Here's who I am. This is who I am. This is my background. I embrace it. I tell the world. And I think it also speaks to his, he's a kind of more accessible, more slightly more relaxed, maybe more American-y Pope than his predecessors. And it gives that vibe, too. It's a vibe. It's 100% a vibe. And I see those photos, I go like, that's the Pope, but also that's a guy from Chicago. Like, both things are present in those photos. I think the best dressed list in vanity fair is broken down into a bunch of categories. Pope Leo is included in the most original category. What do you think about his style that makes him original? Like, how does that label apply to him, do you think? I would actually dispute that label, I'm not sure. It is original except that, okay, he is the first Pope to wear Nike's and a baseball cap. So maybe that makes him original. I think the whole idea of a best dressed list itself is a kind of misnomer because it's not really a judgment on the taste of the people involved. It's really like, these are the people who's close. thing is setting off the most conversation, right, like these are the people people are talking about. When I think about the Catholic Church, like I think about an institution that is so steeped in history and tradition, how much of a say do you think the Pope would get in, you know, what he gets to wear every day, like, to what degree is that even changeable? I mean, within tradition, he has a big say. I mean, just think about, okay, we're talking details matter, right? Details matter here. So you think about like the last three popes, you know, the last three popes, the shoes were like a huge thing, right? Like Pope Benedict was famous for bringing back the red slippers, the red leather slippers that had been sort of in and out, you know, with other popes over time. But he was also, you know, famously a very elaborate dresser, right? He really embraced the richness and the sort of the luxury and the tradition of that side of the church. But Francis, who followed him completely the opposite, you know, was very much about humility and being, you know, relating to the poor and, you know, he chose to wear sandals, I think he won't point who's called like the Pope in sandals, or, you know, or brown shoes. And now you have Leo in his sneakers. So like, each Pope is saying something about their position, really, on Catholicism, their value system to the world with their shoes. And their degree of relatability, of course, like that is a thing that he's trying to do. Like, the idea that me and the Pope wear own the same shoes, that's not a reality that has ever entered, you know, my life until until this very Pope. Pope Leo should say also made Vogue's list of best dress people into my 25. Is there a look or like a pattern that stands out to you when it comes to the way that Pope Leo dresses? Like, what's, do you have a favorite Pope Leo look that you can think of? I mean, I think the thing again is that Pope Leo is really splitting the difference between Francis and Benedict. Yeah. His brought back some of the more formal and more fancy looks at Benedict favors. You know, he's got the Irman robes again. But he also has some of the, as you say, like accessibility and normal guy, NIST that Francis had. Right. And that probably is very much like the position he has to thread politically within the church. When you think about the message that that is trying to send, like, what does that tell you about the way that he's starting to sort of lead the Catholic church by making those choices, you think? I think he's a consensus Pope, right? He really is trying to unite the church. He's trying to, I think, like, unite the world really. Like, he talks a lot about the need for, you know, for peace and the importance of outreach, you know, particularly given the fact that we're in this geopolitical moment with many wars, you know, I think he sees himself as a bridge builder and his clothes are about bridge building. But I was trying to think about the other days, like I was trying to think about, are there any other popes where people have talked about their fashion as much as they have with this Pope? Because this feels new to me, you know, but I don't know this, this feels new to you as well. The idea that, of course, if people pay attention to how Pope dresses, but this is a lot of conversation. That's a lot of best dressed list that's, you know, that's a, that feels new to me. Does that feel new to you as well? Well, Francis made Esquite, was Esquire's 2013 best dress man of the year. Okay, I did, I did not remember that at all. I think my brain got a block that out because so this has happened before. So this has happened before. And in fact, you know, the, the sheer reality that the Met, to go back to the Met when it did, it's, it's, it's show heavenly bodies, Catholicism and the fashion imagination, you know, it included 42 pieces from the Vatican. Right. So people have been paying attention to how Pope's dress for some time. I think Pope's have been best dressed for centuries. I, I'm curious, do you, do you think these personal style choices make them more accessible to people? Or does it, because there's the other thing that happens is people go, how do I take this person? Seriously, they're wearing this on the world stage. Right. How, how was this Pope red in terms of how fashion choices land? I, you know, I think the Pope is being really smart and strategic. Fashion is part of the vernacular of the world at the moment, right? It's how we communicate. We all see pictures, pictures like flood, social media, we make judgments about people by how they're dressed before we listen to anything they say, right? Before we listen to any homelies or speeches or read position papers or whatever. And he is simply using the tools at his disposal to, you know, disseminate his message. Yeah. I think there's a, that's, I like that way of putting it because when I think about this Pope, you know, I think about the, the sneakers and the hats, but also I think about his, his, his, his lengthy piece on AI in this moment. And the, the message that I started to keep getting from this Pope is, hey, I'm having the same conversations that you're having. And I think one, one way to do that is, you know, to issue large edicts or, you know, published 27,000 words on AI. But another way to do that, right, is just to communicate it with the fashion that he's doing that really well. Vanessa Friedman, I really appreciate your time. Pleasure to talk to you. But as a Friedman is a fashion director and chief fashion critic for The New York Times. And that's it for the show today. My name is Aluminum De Mahmoud. This is commotion. See you tomorrow.