A song about immigration, whose music, vocals and artwork were all generated using artificial intelligence, has made it into the top 50 most-listened-to songs in Germany, perhaps a first in a major music market.
“Verknallt in einen Talahon” is a parody song that interweaves ’60s schlager pop with contemporary lyrics based on racial stereotypes about immigrants.
The song peaked at number 48 in Germany, the world’s fourth-largest music market. Less than a month after its release, the song has garnered 3.5 million streams on Spotify, reaching number three on the streaming platform’s global viral chart.
The song’s writer, Joshua Wagbinger, known as Butterbro, said he created the song’s chorus by feeding his lyrics into Udio, a generative artificial intelligence tool that can generate vocals and instruments from simple text prompts.
He added the verses using music tools after the chorus went viral on TikTok. “I think there’s still enough creative freedom in the song to make it into a creative project,” the IT specialist and hobbyist musician told German music production podcast Die Klangküche (Sound Kitchen).
The song has attracted attention in the German media not only for the production techniques used, but also for its lyrical content. Translated as “In Love with Tarahon”, the song references the German 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 immigrant backgrounds and often carries a derogatory connotation.
The lyrics parody the classic “good girl falls for the bad girl” storyline from 1960s songs such as “Leader of the Pack” by The Shangri-Las, in which the singer’s AI-generated object of desire wears “Louis belts, Gucci bags and Air Max trainers” and “smells like an entire perfume store.”
When her lover gets angry, she thinks, “He’s as sweet as baklava,” perhaps an attempt to identify him with Turkish culture.
Waghubinger said he wanted to make a song that poked fun at overtly macho behavior “with a twinkle in his eye and without discrimination,” but added that his main motivation was to make a song that would go viral on social media. “That was the challenge I set for myself,” he told Die Klangküche magazine.
But Marie-Louise Goldman, culture editor at the conservative tabloid Die Welt, said the song walked a fine line between parody and discrimination.
“The mere blend of immigrant youth culture and German Schlager conservatism is likely to excite as many listeners as it offends,” she said. “Tarahon doesn’t hide his own backward gender image (in the song), but it’s debatable whether he (Butterbro) is making light of it, glamorizing it or attacking it.”
Felicia Agaye, a writer for the music magazine Diffus, said the song’s popularity was “doubly problematic”, and that “Tarahon” had become an insult against immigrants among young people in Germany and Austria.
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“Right-wing groups, for example, have used the term to create villains and stoke Islamophobia and xenophobia,” she said. “The problem is that Butterbro doesn’t seem to understand the negative issues surrounding the term.”
“The way he’s done it has, to some extent, helped bring the word into the mainstream.”
A number of AI-generated songs in a similar style have been circulating on German social media, mixing the sweet sounds of 1960s MOR schlager pop with bawdy sexual lyrics.
Music producers are increasingly using artificial intelligence to generate vocals in the style of famous singers: in 2023, The Beatles released the track “Now and Then,” which featured an AI-assisted extrapolation of John Lennon’s vocals.
An AI-generated song featuring Tupac Shakur’s voice was uploaded to Canadian rapper Drake’s Instagram account in April, but was reportedly removed after the late rapper’s lawyers threatened legal action.
