A song about immigrants, whose music, vocals and artwork were entirely generated using artificial intelligence, has made it into the top 50 most listened to songs in Germany – which may be a first for a leading music market.
“Verknallt in einen Talahon” is a parody song that combines modern lyrics – many of which are based on racial stereotypes about immigrants – with 1960s pop music.
In Germany, the fourth largest music market in the world, the song is ranked 48th. Less than a month after its release, the song has 3.5 million streams on Spotify and is ranked third on the streaming platform’s global viral charts.
Its creator, Josua Waghubinger, who performs under the stage name Butterbro, said he created the song’s chorus by feeding his own lyrics into Udio, a generative artificial intelligence tool that can generate vocals and instrumentation from simple text prompts.
He used the music tool to add a verse after the chorus received a positive response on TikTok. “I think there is still enough creative freedom in the song to make it a creative project,” said the IT professional and amateur musician in an interview with the German music production podcast “Die Klangküche”.
The song attracted attention in the German media not only because of the production technique used, but also because of its lyrics. The song, which translates as “In Love with a Talahon”, refers to a Germanized version of the Arabic expression “taeal huna”, which means “come here”, but is now commonly used in Germany to describe groups of young men with a migrant background, often with derogatory undertones.
The lyrics parody the classic “good girl/bad boy” plot lines of 1960s songs like the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack.” The AI-generated singer’s object of desire wears “a Louis belt, a Gucci bag, and Air Max sneakers” and “smells like an entire perfume shop.”
When her lover gets angry, she muses, “He is as sweet as baklava” – probably an attempt to identify him with Turkish culture.
Waghubinger said he wanted to make a song that made fun of excessive macho behavior “with a wink and without discrimination,” but added that his main motivation was to produce a song that would go viral on social media. “That was the challenge I set myself,” he told Klangküche.
But Marie-Luise Goldmann, culture editor of the conservative newspaper “Die Welt”, said the song walked a fine line between parody and discrimination.
“The mixture of migrant youth culture and German pop conservatism alone will delight as many listeners as it will offend,” she said. “The Talahon (in the song) does not hide his backward gender image, but it is questionable whether he (Butterbro) trivializes it, glorifies it or attacks it.”
Felicia Aghaye, a writer for the music magazine Diffus, described the popularity of the song as “doubly problematic” because “Talahon” has become established among young Germans and Austrians as an insult against migrants.
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“Right-wing groups, for example, use the term to create a bogeyman and stir up Islamophobia and xenophobia,” she said. “The problem is that Butterbro does not seem to understand the negative aspects associated with this term.”
“His track helps bring the term into the mainstream.”
Numerous AI-generated songs in a similar style are circulating on German social media, mixing the sweet sound of MOR Schlager pop from the 1960s with crudely sexualized lyrics.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used by music producers to create vocals in the style of famous singers. In 2023, the Beatles released “Now and Then,” a song that used AI to extrapolate John Lennon’s vocals.
A track featuring an AI-generated version of Tupac Shakur’s voice was uploaded to Canadian rapper Drake’s Instagram account in April, but disappeared after the late rapper’s lawyers reportedly threatened to sue.
