The Rise of The AI Sports "Anthem"

It's All Fun And Games Until The Robo Jock Jams Come Out

About a month ago on this blog, I mused about the evolution (or devolution) of the modern sports song, or “Jock Jam.” I asked, “What does one even sound like in the present day?” Well, just a couple of weeks ago I got my answer.

I recently had gone to a Los Angeles Chargers/Houston Texans game in Inglewood during the holiday season. And after a great game in which my Texans won, I did what any fan would do in this situation: I bragged on social. I went to find the perfect song to match my photos, and came across a “Houston Texans Anthem” created by ‘Central Cali Love Productions.’ And then it hit me: the AI music revolution is already here. First, the song.

This was not a case of me plugging in a couple of sports prompts into Suno for my own enjoyment. This wasn’t a humorous take on a well-known song sung in a different genre (because those are kind of fun in a novelty sense, I reckon). This was a case of me, a social media user looking for a specific piece of novelty content, meeting a company that seemingly does nothing but make niche music to be used on social media. While this would be forgiven if this were one dude who really liked his team doing a theme, when you realize this artist has a song for EVERY major North American Team, it’s kind of wild. Indeed, there are even songs for when certain teams clinch for the playoffs. I would attach one here, but your time is valuable, so here’s an AI cover that takes DMX’s “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” as a 1950s Soul cover:

Here’s the thing: I’m not even anti-AI. I know, that sounds absolutely crazy coming from me. As a podcaster and a DJ, most of my livelihood is threatened by Artificial Intelligence every day. I generate AI images for non-commercial use sometimes. I spend some evenings making AI-generated things on Suno or Sora. Yes, there’s a whole ethical debate here, but I typically maintain that while it is legal, it’s okay to play around with it for private use.

But for some reason it’s the sports thing that makes me conflicted.

And it’s not even from the song itself. I actually like the “Houston Texans Anthem” as it was posted. As a fan, though, it’s kind of missing the human element that makes sports anthems fun. This wasn’t a fan of a team that wanted to show the world how much they loved their local team, like when the dude from Rancid did a whole theme song for the Real Salt Lake soccer team.

This isn’t a case of a sports team stupidly getting caught up in the pop culture of the time to make an unholy union of cringe, like when the Green Bay Packers came out with “The Packerena”

No, this was something missing the kind of context that makes fandom great. Like you could tell, there was a prompt that listed the team, some of the players and coaches, and a musical genre that aligns with the team location. That’s different, y’all. I’m all for music without soul. But music without soul AND passion? Man, I need to take a walk and process all of this.

Because, I’m starting to worry that people don’t realize what “anthems” are. True jock jams are anointed. A song comes on, and people collectively lose their minds. Of course, I’ll give a pass to the 2020 XFL. They launched their league from scratch and commissioned 8 (authentic, non-AI) anthems, one for each of their teams, with the hopes that they would catch on. It didn’t, but I still sing some of them like this one and this one.

No, seriously, check this out. I’m a fan of the Brooklyn Nets, right? Here’s an anthem attempt from musician and human John Forte:

And here’s an AI version that just mentions the current players and coaches, while making the song about the current rebuild.

Talking about a rebuild in an anthem is nasty work.

I guess this whole thing is a symptom of a bigger issue, right? We’re more isolated now than ever before, and nobody who makes these things thinks about 1) whether it would be liked, 2) if these songs would be played in a stadium, and 3) whether it captures the spirit of a team or it just serves the ‘creator’ of the song.

And yes, you’d end up with the occasional “Packerena” but that’s the price we all have to pay.