You haven't understood anything, Beyoncé

When Guardian asked him to edit the Observer Music Monthly, Jarvis Cocker thought it would be interesting to decide what music is for. Whether it is used for a legitimate purpose and what it means to have legitimacy. He called together a gang of very famous friends, wrote a list of purposes that seemed appropriate (humor, marching, dance, communication, atmosphere, revolution, comfort, soundtrack, advertising) and began the debate with an anecdote. He had recently heard Johnny Cash singing 'Hurt' on TV and it turned out to be a Nike advert. “It seemed like a pretty inappropriate use of music to me,” Jarvis observed. “I personally find it offensive that Iggy Pop's 'Lust for Life' was used for a car commercial,” complained Nick Cave, who belted out that song when he was 19 and driving for freedom. They all said that they would never allow that to happen to one of his songs. It was October 2006 and we were all younger. There was not tiktokers nor generative models of artificial intelligence.

It happens to almost all of us when we find an artist's work associated with a brand or product that contradicts what we consider its true spirit. I remember poor Rowena Morrill's astonishment when they found not one but several of her works in Saddam Hussein's house. We feel that the work has been sullied, that its aura is degraded and that, voluntarily or involuntarily, the artist has suffered a loss of integrity. Out of its proper context, the exact same song morphs into a dark twin that, like everything doppelgänger, threatens to destroy the original. That is why there are artists who do not give in to temptation. I think about this while wondering what the new version of 'Jolene' that Beyoncé released on her latest album is for, Cowboy Carter, where the lyrics, intention and spirit of the work change without changing the music. It's half 'Jolene', half Queen B.

This is not a doppelganger generated by artificial intelligence. Generative AI companies have already accumulated 20 lawsuits in the United States for violating copyright. If it were, the Elvis Act (Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act) was passed in Tennessee a few weeks ago to protect musicians from having their voice, image and performances replicated without prior authorization. The law has ambitions to serve as a model to contain the same problem in the rest of the world, although its promoters are not exactly the musicians of Tennessee. Behind them are RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), NMPA (National Music Publishers Association), Broadcast Music, Inc. (Music Copyright Society), ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) , Recording Academy (organization behind the Grammys), A2IM (American Association of Independent Music)… It seems more designed to protect the investment of record companies and guarantee new business avenues for heirs and management companies. It won't save Elvis from advertising canned sardines and neither will Prince.

Why are we so upset that Beyoncé uses a revered '70s classic to write a new song?

But 'Jolene' is copyrighted and Dolly Parton is alive. In fact, two years ago she said on TV that she wanted a Beyoncé version, like Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You'. “Someone who can take my little songs and make them powerful.” Did she need money? In 2021, Forbes He valued the singer's fortune at 350 million dollars, but it is very expensive to be an old glory. The version is legal and the use is fair. Why are we so upset that Beyoncé uses a revered '70s classic to write a new song?

Unlike an advertising campaign or AI, the artist does not steal the auras. But it does something to them. When Johnny Cash sings 'Hurt,' a song Trent Reznor wrote at age 20 about his addictions and his journey toward self-destruction, he turns it into his song, about his story and his old age. The result is a bigger, deeper, truer song. When Kurt Cobain sings 'The Man Who Sold the World', the song loses some of Bowie's alien strangeness, but fills it with humanity. When Luke Combs, white star of the country whitest North Carolina, plays with Tracy Chapman on her version of 'Fast Car,' the anthem of escape she wrote while poor, lesbian and black, the union of her opposites producing the most exciting five minutes in Grammy history. This is not what has happened here.

Aretha Franklin didn't have to alter Otis Redding's lyrics about a man who comes home after work and yells at his wife to treat him with more respect to transform 'Respect' into the feminist anthem that empowered every woman in America. . Beyoncé's problem is not the change of point of view. Her mistake was choosing what is possibly the most honest love song of all time and turning it into a jingle advertising for his kingdom. 'Jolene' is still intact, but the queen now only serves to sell banal power.

Marta Peirano She is a technology specialist and author of the books The enemy knows the system and against the future (both in Debate).

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