And Silver Night again: how the hit of perestroika topped the world top Shazam

The neural network-generated remix of the song "Gray Night" by the band "Tender May" has become a worldwide hit. The track Silver Night, which was performed by Kanye West in English by artificial intelligence, topped the top 200 of the Shazam chart. Behind them were Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars. Who created the neural network hit and why it got knocked up is in the Izvestia article.

How "Grey Night" topped the world chart

In Russian popular culture, the year 2023 was marked by a trend for the 1980s and 1990s. Then the "Word of the Kid" thundered on the screens. Following this, fashion took a course towards nostalgia. And listening to songs from the Perestroika era has increased significantly on music streaming sites. 35 years after the release, Yuri Shatunov's "Grey Night" turned out to be at the peak of popularity.

Today, it sounds with new power — the song suddenly became a worldwide hit, although not its original version, but an English-language version completely generated by artificial intelligence. The Silver Night track is performed by Kanye West's voice, also by AI forces. Neurohit first spread on social networks, and then topped the top 200 of the global Shazam and left behind Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars. Even the real Kanye West (his first mention in the chart is now only at 107th place).

The author of the cover is a 36—year-old blogger from Izhevsk, who works under the pseudonym August Septemberov. In his universe, Snoop Dogg has already sung the familiar lines "A wonderful neighbor has settled in our house", Taylor Swift — "Vladimir Central", Billie Eilish — "Beautiful Far away", Eminem — "My Game" by Basta. The craftsman publishes the results of his work on social networks, using footage from concerts, music videos and films with the participation of stars as a video sequence. The videos have from several hundred thousand to millions of views. Gray Night has more than 3 million on just one of the blogger's pages. He added music to footage from Kanye West's concert, where the rapper performed standing on a huge hemisphere in the shape of a globe.

— Could I ever have thought that I would bring "Gentle May" to the first place in the global Shazam? — the author himself is surprised in an interview with Izvestia. — The idea of using "Grey Night" as a basis has been in my head for a long time. It is a hit that is popular among all generations. And then I started coming across videos from Kanye West's recent concert. I decided to try to combine it, and off it went.

The idea is to mix eras, styles and genres. According to the author, it can take from several hours to some minutes to create a finished product. Although, if the goal is for results, then the refinement takes much longer.

— The most difficult thing in working with AI is sorting and polishing the result. This can take anywhere from a few hours to several weeks. I've been looking for a suitable style and voice that I'm ready to publish for about a month," the creator of the hit shared.

In addition, he notes, the English-language text needs to be composed in such a way that it is musical, hits the beat, and the rhymes sound. Therefore, in his version, for example, the night is not gray (gray /gray), but silver (silver).

"It must be quite unexpected, maybe even a little absurd."

The success of any viral phenomenon, whether it's a picture, track, or video, is a combination of several factors, explains Sergey Uvarov, a musicologist and member of the Russian Union of Composers.

"It should be quite unexpected, maybe even a little absurd, but in fact it is very simple and designed for the most massive audience — a kind of entry into the collective unconscious," he told Izvestia. — "Gray Night" meets all the criteria. In this case, the scandals surrounding Kanye and HYPE in connection with his new album and tour are also fueling interest.

In addition, Uvarov draws attention to the fact that in his "real" music, West actively uses soul motifs, samples from recordings of the last century.

— There are a lot of numbers on the new album where he sings, not raps. That's why the songs of "Gentle May" in his "performance" sound so plausible. After all, popular music, whether from Russia or the United States, is often based on the same harmonies and intonations. And in general, modern performers have long accustomed us to retro-sounding. Kanye is no exception. Suffice it to say that in one of his major albums "808s & Heartbreak" he actively uses the Roland TR-808 analog synthesizer, popular in the early 80s. We hear a similar technique in Russian perestroika pop music. So for all the seeming absurdity of the combination of Kanye and Gentle May, there are very unobvious intersections here," the expert concluded.

Kanye West's fans also decided that Silver Night fits seamlessly into his repertoire, and now they're flooding his official social media page with comments demanding that he sing "Grey Night." The rapper has not yet responded to the offer, as well as to the track itself. But the author of Silver Night received a like from the official page of Yuri Shatunov. After all, he sees his mission as uniting generations and countries and giving the music of the past decades a second life.