I Made an AI Song Called Hollywood Is Cooked
A filmmaker's detour into music, and what the tools could actually do once I asked them to hold a feeling longer than a shot.
By Alexander Kiesel, film producer, director, and founder of Periti Studios.
I direct films for a living, so a song was never the plan. It started as a bit. I'd been arguing for a while, including in my Hollywood Is Cooked essay, that cheap iteration is quietly changing who gets to make things. At some point it seemed dishonest to keep saying that about images and never test it on sound.
Keeping the title
I kept the name from the essay because the song is the same thought wearing different clothes. The essay is an argument. The track is a shrug with a beat under it. Both come from watching an industry I love get nervous about tools that mostly make it easier to try things.
Where the tools held up, and where they didn't
The generation part is genuinely good now. Getting a texture, a mood, a usable hook out of nothing takes minutes. What it will not do is decide what the song is for. I still had to choose the feeling, cut the parts that were merely clever, and sit with it until the shape felt right. That is the same job as editing a trailer, which is the work I already know how to do.
Consistency was the hard part, the way it always is with these tools. Holding one idea across a full track is much harder than nailing a single striking moment. I worked the way I work on my films: generate more than I need, throw most of it out, protect the feeling above everything.
Listen
The single is out now under my own name. You can play it on the music page or straight from Spotify. It won't be the last one.