It’s OK, Music Is Deeper Than AI
Music frozen by time
Pythagoras is said to have held up a stone and said, “This is frozen music.” He wasn’t just being poetic. Everything is vibration. When it moves fast enough, it becomes sound. When it slows, it becomes matter. So music, in that sense, has been around much longer that us. It isn’t so much something we invented as something we "noticed". The same patterns that hold stars and galaxies together also move through strings, drums, and vocal cords. You can feel that truth when a great song hits you. Before any lyric makes sense, rhythm and harmony are already at work. You don’t really decide to start tapping your foot, but you do anyway, and your heart locks in before your head even catches up. Music reminds us that we’re built to resonate with one another.
The Science of Togetherness
Biochemistry has been catching up to what our ancestors already knew. When people sing, drum, or dance together, our body floods with oxytocin (the hormone of bonding and trust.) It happens to the couple slow-dancing in the kitchen, fans screaming at a Taylor Swift concert, and the haka at Eden Park. Music "pulls us into unison". It’s how we align, focus, and feel like one living organism, even if it's just for a moment. Music enables cohesion, and it's deeper than entertainment. Villages can become tribes, and heartbreak can turn into healing.
Why AI Can’t Replace the Pulse
So when people worry about AI “replacing” music, it feels to me like it's the wrong fear. The danger is in viewing music as a file, or a commodity, or as something you "consume". AI can analyze harmonies, model emotion, and increasingly, generate songs that sound eerily human. But perhaps music is more about participation than computation. I love noticing that look when band members connect while playing in the same room. It’s the baton being lifted before the orchestra plays. AI can predict the shape of a chorus, but it doesn’t dance with you in the kitchen at 1 a.m. or cry with you at a funeral or make you feel like a warrior in a stadium crowd. The essence of music isn’t the code of a file, it’s the chemistry between the people who are experiencing it.
The Common Denominator
In Molly Devine’s new single, “Common Denominator” she refers to being the one who’s always around, the constant - the through-line, "the one who will be here later", "the common denominator." Music can be thought of as that same constant. Cassette, vinyl, Spotify, Guitar, synth, loop pedal, DAW. The tools change. The truth of music doesn’t. Music is the common denominator of human connection. It binds people who are falling in love, starting a revolution, or just trying to remember who they are.
Beyond the Algorithm
So we can explore new tools, and the brave amongst us might collaborate with AI despite the current social stigma, and new harmonies might emerge, or the whole thing might end up being looked back on as a 'fad' (at least in it's current form), but let’s not confuse imitation with embodiment. AI can reflect back to us re-generations of what we've already created in the past, but we're still the only ones who can truly experience that sound, and feel what it connects us to. Music isn't just code, or a digital file that makes sound. It's the mutual human understanding of what that sound means. And record labels should know better than anyone that the technology of music changes all the time, but music is the common denominator.