Tears For Fears: Don’t like the cover made by AI
At the beginning of the month, i Tears For Fears have announced a new live album titled “Songs For A Nervous Planet” (also containing four unreleased songs). (Read here)
But many of the people excited about the project were disappointed by the artwork, accusing it of being generated by artificial intelligence. And they were right! The artist who produced the cover image is Vitalie Burcovschiwhose website reads “Art created by AI with human imagination.”
Tears For Fears addressed the issue in an Instagram post earlier this week.
In the post, under a photo of Burcovschi on the computer, the band wrote:
The cover of our new album, Songs For A Nervous Planet, was designed in collaboration with artist Vitalie Burcovschi, also known as @surrealistly. The artwork for Songs For A Nervous Planet is a mixed media digital collage, with AI being just one of the many tools used in the creative process. We wanted a vibrant artwork that evoked a sense of science fiction, futuristic themes and an escape from the known. The sunflowers are a joyful nod to classic Tears For Fears imagery, while the astronaut juxtaposition is a link to our upcoming song, Astronaut, and a sense of alienation and not belonging. We’ve been fans of Surrealistly’s work for a long time and knew he would be the perfect artist to bring our vision to life.
For her part, Vitalie Burcovschi wrote on the same post:
Collaborating with the band to bring their vision to life was an incredible experience. Balancing the surrealism with the emotional depth of their music was a challenge I fully embraced and I believe the final artwork captures the powerful essence of their story.” -Surrealistly
Fans in the comments are still not satisfied, calling the choice “toneless,” “soulless” and “indefensible.” Tears For Fears are just the latest artist to have to make a statement regarding the use of AI following fan reactions – you’d think they’d have figured out by now that fans don’t like it!
A few months ago other fans had “launched” against the use of AI in the graphics accompanying records or concerts. Fans of Tedeschi Trucks Band (Read here) had expressed strong doubts about a poster in the merchandising of a live concert, accusing the band of having created it (poorly) with this controversial instrument. The band promised that they would investigate the matter, but the creators of the poster (“Brilliant Workshop”) did not provide the processing files and so the band apologized and decided to donate the funds raised from the sale of the poster to Access Gallery an artist-run center in Vancouver.
But the world of music has been discussing a lot about the use of artificial intelligence in the musical field for some time. Obviously a polarization between pros and cons immediately arose. In the ranks of the former we can include among others the Orb, Peter Gabriel, Liam Gallagher, Guetta and ours Rocco Tanica.
The “team” of those against sees, among others, Roger Daltry, Giorgio Moroder, Laurie Anderson, Nick Cave and always our locals Sud Sound System.
This tool is being used more and more frequently. We find it used in the last “posthumous” song by Beatles “Now and Then” released last 2023, where he recovered the voice of John Lennon. Even the music of Beach Boys and gods Oasis she was “treated” by the AI, which she reported on video Minaand made him sing “Yesterday” a Freddie Mercury.
The problem also affects the rights and recording sectors, which find themselves having to deal with the music generated by Artificial Intelligence and its management in their respective fields.
