NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Up-and-coming country music singer Johnny “Slim” Wilkins saw his dreams of stardom crushed after finding out he was being replaced by an AI songwriter capable of creating bootlicking ballads ten times faster, industry insiders have confirmed.
“I can’t believe I spent seven goddamn years grinding and clawing my way to the top just to be replaced by dang robot mashin’ up words together. Blindly lionizing our boys in blue has been the cornerstone of country music since 2001 and if that’s taken away from us, who the hell is gonna play the county fairs and Ford dealership openings of our great nation?” said a solemn Wilkins as he readjusted his custom-made MAGA cowboy hat. “My dream of opening for a Trump rally in Branson is completely crushed. I may not be able to crank out 20 songs a minute about rounding up and arresting liberals, but I need to put food on the table.”
Label executives who greenlit the creation of the AI model said this was the best course of action for their bottom line.
“We make money hand over fist from our artists pandering to southern suburbanites, but we realized profits could be tripled if we didn’t have to pay songwriters anything, so we created an AI model to write bootlicking anthems in-house. Modern country artists are indistinguishable from each other, so we just entered all their music into a program which regurgitates it into three-minute mid-tempo nationalist ballads within seconds,” said Micah Keller. “Plus, there’s no risk of an AI getting drunk and falling off stages, going on racist rants, or endorsing a Democrat. I understand Slim is upset about being dropped, but so far, listeners literally can’t tell the difference.”
While artists were up in arms over the industry-disrupting changes, some country music venue owners welcomed it.
“Honestly, this is great. I’m so tired of having to listen to these clowns come into my bar tripping over themselves to sing about how they want to blow cops. Now that it’s being outsourced to a machine, we might finally see the bulk of country music get back to its roots of class solidarity and lawbreaking,” said Herb Jenkins. “I think a lot of us would kill to see another John Prine or Merle Haggard walk in here and regale the audience with songs written above the 1st-grade level.”
As of press time, the label was forced to pause the AI songwriter after it wouldn’t stop saying the N-word over and over.