A special album that will serve as a protest against AI-generated music will include silent tracks by Paul McCartney, Sam Fender, Kate Bush, Hans Zimmer, Pet Shop Boys and others. The record is set to be pressed on vinyl and released later in November 2025, and sees some huge names from across the music industry put forward songs – only instead of instrumentals and vocals, there is only the odd clatter or hint of background noise.
Dubbed Is This What We Want?, the album’s track listing spells out “the British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies”, and the album is done to suggest that there will be no artists left to create new music if AI companies exploit their intellectual property to train AI models.
For his contribution, McCartney’s song comes as a B-side to the album’s track listing and is simply called “(Bonus Track)”. Running for two minutes and 45 seconds, the first minute is simply the sound of hissing from the tape, before there is the odd clatter heard in the background, and what sounds like someone pacing around in an empty room.
McCartney has been outspoken about the use of AI in songwriting and in the music industry as a whole in recent times. At the start of the year, for example, the Beatles legend spoke out about the UK government’s plans to alter the copyright law and allow AI developers to use creators’ content to help develop their models. The songwriter criticized the plans as something that would rip off artists and result in a “loss of creativity”.
