Paul McCartney, widely regarded as Britain’s greatest living songwriter, has released his first new recording in five years. However, fans looking for the melodic genius of “Hey Jude” or “Maybe I’m Amazed” will be met with a starkly different listening experience. The former Beatle has contributed a track consisting almost entirely of silence to a new protest album, aiming to highlight the existential threat artificial intelligence poses to the music industry.
The recording, titled simply “(bonus track),” appears on the B-side of a collaborative LP titled Is This What We Want?. The track runs for two minutes and 45 seconds—roughly the same length as the classic Beatles hit “With a Little Help From My Friends”—but features no instruments or vocals. Instead, the audio landscape is composed of 55 seconds of tape hiss, followed by 15 seconds of “indeterminate clattering” that suggests someone pacing in a studio, before fading out with more static.
This avant-garde release is a direct statement against tech companies using copyrighted music to train generative AI models without permission or compensation. The album’s track listing explicitly spells out the collective’s demand: “the British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies”.
McCartney joined the project alongside other major artists, including Kate Bush, Sam Fender, Hans Zimmer, and the Pet Shop Boys, who have all contributed similar “silent” recordings to the cause. McCartney has been vocal about the issue previously, expressing deep concern for the next generation of artists.
In a statement regarding the rapid advancement of the technology, McCartney noted: “We[‘ve] got to be careful about it because it could just take over and we don’t want that to happen, particularly for the young composers and writers [for] who, it may be the only way they[‘re] gonna make a career.” He further emphasized the gravity of the situation, adding, “If AI wipes that out, that would be a very sad thing indeed.”
The protest comes as the UK government faces pressure from major tech firms to loosen copyright regulations to foster AI development. Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and campaigner for copyright fairness who is behind the protest album, highlighted the perceived imbalance in government priorities. “I am very concerned the government is paying more attention to US tech companies’ interests rather than British creatives’ interests,” Newton-Rex stated.
Other contributors to the album echoed these fears. Kate Bush, another icon of British music involved in the project, posed a chilling question regarding the trajectory of the industry: “In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?”
Critics of the government’s current stance argue that ministers are failing to protect the creative sector, which adds £125 billion annually to the UK economy. Beeban Kidron, a cross-bench peer and film director, told the Guardian that the current approach is failing everyone. “The government is trying to play both sides and convincing neither,” she said, adding that ministers “have proven themselves unfit to govern in the economic interests of the creators.”
By releasing a track with “barely anything there,” McCartney and his peers offer a stark warning of what a future without human creativity might sound like—a quiet hiss where a song used to be.
