If you haven’t heard of the Birds Aren’t Real movement, let me catch you up. It’s a parody conspiracy group, started in 2017, that quickly gained traction for its absurdity and humor. It started as a spontaneous reaction to a Pro-Trump Women’s March in Memphis.
Overwhelmed by the lunacy on display, Peter McIndoe, home-schooled from Arkansas and no stranger to conspiracies himself, grabbed a sign and wrote on it three random words: “Birds Aren’t Real.” And for years he would stay in character as the spokesperson and chief believer, suggesting that birds are in fact government drones created to spy on citizens.
The movement pokes fun at the absurdity of real-world conspiracy groups such as Flat Earthers, Chemtrails and 5G conspiracy groups, and the spread of misinformation in our society, QAnon, etc.
However, with it’s nearly half a million members on Reddit, the movement also serves as a commentary on the societal dynamics that gives rise to such fringe beliefs; how mockery, exclusion, and outright hostility can further push these individuals into digital echo chambers where such beliefs are reinforced. It’s a poignant critique of society, wrapped in several layers of irony and juvenile humor. So when I decided to create my first song using AI, I thought this would be the perfect subject!
I started off by writing the lyrics:
They tweet and chirp, it’s all just lies,
They’re gathering data, those government spies,
Underneath the feathers it’s wires and steel,
Wake up, birds aren’t real!
They charge on power lines from dusk till dawn,
Got you feeding them bread like some kind of pawn,
But they don’t really eat, they can’t even feel,
Wake up, birds aren’t real!
Birds aren’t real, they’re government drones,
They’re made of wires not skin and bones,
With integrated circuits and a beak of steel,
Wake up, birds aren’t real!
They got lithium batteries that last a week,
They work on cellular networks, the data’s ‘cheep’,
They’ve got a gyroscope, a GPS, and DVD,
And their beady little eyes can see in 1080p!
Refrain:
Wake up, birds aren’t real! (x2)
Chorus:
Wake up, birds aren’t real,
Underneath the feathers it’s wires and steel,
They don’t need to eat, they can’t even feel,
Wake up, birds aren’t real!
Once I was happy with these, I spent about a whole day feeding verses into Suno.AI. Suno uses generative AI to take a music “genre” and description or lyrics to create a 1 minute song clip. When you find one you like, you can opt to extend this clip for another minute, and another minute, adding different lyrics each time. The results are impressive, but each clip feels like a section out of the middle of a song. You can’t really generate a whole song this way.
So my next step, armed with all the little “pieces” of a song, was to use another AI tool, VocalRemover.org, to separate the vocals from the music. This gave me instrumental bars that I could chop and change like musical building blocks, and vocal samples, both male and female, that I could overlay for the chorus and refrain. Then it was just a case of arranging them all into a song!
And here’s the result. Please watch to the end, and like or comment on YouTube, as this is my first ever song and I’m trying to get the algorithms to pick it up!
