ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus Talks Using AI in Music Composition: “Right now, I’m writing a musical assisted by AI.”
As far as pop music is concerned, the Swedish band ABBA is one of the best and most influential musical projects of all time. Founded in 1972, the project launched Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad, Agnetha Fältskog, and Björn Ulvaeus into stardom.
After their 1974 Eurovision Song Contest win, ABBA became a global phenomenon and the number of their hit songs is too long to list here. The band split up in 1982 and while there have been both talks and desires for a proper reunion, this never happened in person.
ABBA did come back in the form of digital avatars back in 2016 and some members of the band continue to make music. Björn Ulvaeus is among them and in light of the band’s recent digital history, he talked about using AI in creating new music.
Ulvaeus, who is a certified hitmaker who wrote many of ABBA’s hit songs, recently visited the first-ever SXSW London and was a guest at “The Future of Entertainment,” which attracted a large audience.
Among the questions discussed there was the use of AI in the music industry, more specifically, in the music creation process, and the former ABBA member seems to have fully embraced AI in the creative process. “Right now, I’m writing a musical assisted by AI,” he revealed to the people there.
“It is such a great tool. It’s unimaginable that you can bounce back and forth with a machine, or software, which can give you ideas to go in various different directions,” he continued, before adding. “A misconception is that AI can write a whole song. It’s lousy at that — very bad. And thank God! It’s very bad at lyrics as well. But it can give you ideas.”
And while not many people will doubt the usefulness of AI in doing some manual tasks quicker, it is a matter of balance. If AI only makes the process faster, without actually altering anything, that’s fine, but what becomes of music when AI starts to “create” it?
In his defense, Ulvaeus provided the audience with an example. “You have written a lyric about something, and you’re stuck maybe, and you want this song to be in a certain style. So you can prompt the lyric and the style you want, asking, ‘Where would you go from here?’ And it usually comes up with garbage, but sometimes there is something in it that gives you another idea. That’s how it works. It’s like having another songwriter in the room with huge reference frames. It is really an extension of your mind,” he said.
And this is, in our honest opinion, the tricky part. Certainly, there are various things that can inspire you, even AI, but this seems like asking AI to create content for you and to come up with ideas that you usually wouldn’t have come up with, thereby decreasing the artistic value of the idea as a whole.
AI should be a tool, but it should not interfere with the creative process in any way. We don’t know how much AI influenced Ulvaeus’ recent work, but we do hope that more of his music comes from his own mind than something that an AI program generated.
Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!
