Fake AI Band, Lame Art, Terrible Lyrics
July 7, 2025
Notes on branding, copywriting, and AI
The Velvet Sundown, Overnight Sensation
The Velvet Sundown, a new band you can listen to on Spotify and Apple Music, has been getting a ton of play both on the platforms (more than 1M Spotify followers) and in the greater media, see RollingStone magazine, the AI Daily Brief podcast, StereoGum and others. That’s a meteoric rise for a musical group that just became a thing in June 2025. But The Velvet Sundown, a so-called seventies-inspired psychedelic rock and alt-pop group, isn’t quite what it seems. It’s actually an AI band, with no real humans playing instruments that you would plug into an amp (though some real person came up with the concept and created the phenomenon.)
Members of The Velvet Sundown
So what do we call this? Is an AI band a fake band? A hoax? Or does it really matter? People might well like and listen to the music and have an affinity to the band members even if it’s all AI created, and how, really, would that be much different than having affinity to a real musician who you’ll never meet or know? They won’t tour. So how much different is The Velvet Sundown than, say, Steely Dan, a 1970s duo that was studio-only for at least a decade? Check out this Atlantic Magazine article “Nobody Cares if Music Is Real Anymore.” Is that really true?
Here’s what “the band” says
“The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence.
This isn’t a trick — it’s a mirror. An ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI.
All characters, stories, music, voices and lyrics are original creations generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools employed as creative instruments. Any resemblance to actual places, events or persons — living or deceased — is purely coincidental and unintentional.”
The Art of an AI Band
I suppose given the changes over the past couple of years in AI, an AI band was inevitable. If creating the virtual group is an art project, however, they should have done a whole lot better with the “art” of it. The artwork, music, and lyrics are all kinda lame. If you go to the trouble of creating a fake, AI band that’s an “artistic provocation,” you could at least try harder to to make it artistic.
Let’s start with their album art? Not good. Maybe you can get away with surrealist-inspired vibe for one album cover, but launching your first two albums in one month and having the covers look so similar, well that’s a failure of imagination on the AI, as well as the “human creative” who guided the project.
How about the songs? Perhaps the band’s musical signature is the abrupt ending. Listen to a few songs and you’ll see what I mean. Other than the endings, however, the songs aren’t distinctive, and each one sounds too much like the next.
Not Lyrics to Remember
What is going on with the lyrics? I mean as an art project, you would think they could do better than this from Dust on the Wind:
“Smoke will clear
Truth won’t bend
Let the song fight ‘till the end”
Or this from Let it Burn!
“Thicker lights on silver sand
Marching goats with no command
Velvet boots on mirrored ground
Drums athunder, distant sound
Promises in static blue
Echo loud in silent rooms
Lanterns fall from satellites
Waving flags in black and white”
This writing is crap. Some potentially interesting images—marching goats or falling lanterns—but the images don’t seem like they actually mean anything. Lights, goats, boots, drums, promises, echoes. There’s no emotional journey or thematic coherence.
But What About the 1970s?
Sure the psychedelic rock and alt-pop from the 1960s and 70s had some out-there lyrics. America’s Ventura Highway, for instance:
“Cause the free wind is blowin' through your hair
And the days surround your daylight there
Seasons crying no despair
Alligator lizards in the air, in the air”
Or Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue:
“Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin’ through
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue”
“Your orphan with his gun” is so evocative and disturbing. Dylan has a way of putting you in an emotional corner. “Alligator lizards in the air” is genuinely whacked, but you feel the emotional crackle of the freedom from being outside—wind, daylight, seasons, out on the highway. But “thicker lights on silver sand”? That’s not going to be tattooed on anyone’s arm tonight. At least let’s hope not.
Don’t Be Lazy (Especially with Lyrics)
This gets back to something I’ve mentioned a number of times on my blog. If you use AI in a lazy way, you’ll get back sub-optimal results. The Velvet Sundown is a perfect example. Doing great creative work takes thoughtfulness, time, inspiration, even when you’re using AI. Especially when using AI! All to say, I’m not adding The Velvet Sundown to my playlist until they go back to the studio and put some real time into their craft.
