1010Benja's Suno Track Wins Over an AI-Skeptic Critic
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- 1010Benja released "Semiramis' Dream" as the opener on his EP Time Has Nothing To Do With What You Choose…, unapologetically disclosing his use of Suno on streaming platforms like Deezer
- Benja's production process involved recording his own vocals over a beat by collaborator Patrick Holder, feeding those elements into Suno, editing the output in Ableton, and re-feeding it back — an estimated "few hundred" iterations
- The song's AI-generated choir is camouflaged inside hyperpop-style rapid-fire vocal chops, making it easy to miss as artificial and contributing to what the reviewer calls its "infectious" quality
- Benja cited financial hardship — including not paying rent for two months and past periods of homelessness — as reason for using generative AI, telling Hearing Things he couldn't afford to hire a professional children's choir
- Benja earned Pitchfork's Best New Music for his 2024 project Ten Total, establishing him as a rising artist whose use of AI is drawing scrutiny rather than obscurity
- The reviewer tempered the praise by noting the AI choir isn't particularly convincing and could likely be replicated with layered vocal processing, meaning "there's little on the song sonically that he couldn't have achieved without AI"
Why it matters: A skeptic conceding that a Suno output is actually good is a small but meaningful data point in the debate over AI music's ceiling. For struggling independent artists like Benja, generative tools are framed not as creative preference but as economic necessity — a dynamic that puts platforms and listeners in the position of judging whether the ends justify ethically loaded means.
