In the big AI debate, Boy George has, perhaps surprisingly, come down firmly in the pro camp. He’s even said he uses it to write lyrics. The 64 year old 80s pop icon was appearing on Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast when conversation came round – as it seems to wherever you are these days – to AI. The Culture Club singer said that it “has really helped me as a lyricist”.One of the reasons he says is that you don’t have to bother with pesky human co-writers. “You’re not working with anyone else,” he explained. “You don’t have to worry even for two seconds about what they think. "I’m a top-line writer, so I write top-line melodies. All the people I work with send me tracks, and I’ll just sit with them, and I’ll just play it and play it.”
“I have fantastic conversations with ChatGPT,” he added. “And I’ll say: ‘Oh, those lyrics are crap. That’s not what I would say.’ You know what I mean? But, actually, you can train it.”Elsewhere in the conversation, George actually said he had written “like, five albums already” with AI. Whether we’ll ever get to hear any of them is another matter entirely though.Neither did he say whether his most recent album, last year’s SE18, was written with artificial assistance. In all other respects it was an old skool album to the core. Musically it was inspired by the reggae he heard in the streets of Woolwich where he grew up – hence the postcode title. Unusually for a new release in the 2020s it only came out in the physical formats of vinyl and CD.
