AI Oasis hits all the right notes

Oasis broke up in 2009 and since then the band’s two frontmen, the Gallagher brothers (vocalist Liam, and lead guitar and composer Noel) have been embroiled in a feud, trading accusations and insults with the notoriously dark humor of British musicians. In the last few days in particular, however, fans have pointed out that a return may be on the cards. The brothers’ messages, always via the press or social networks, have softened and some even point to the fact that the Gallaghers are already in contact. In the meantime, artificial intelligence (AI) has beaten them to the punch.

“We’re bored of waiting for Oasis to reform, so we’ve written some songs inspired by early Oasis. The only thing that is not ours is Liam Gallagher’s voice, which is created by artificial intelligence.” El País interviewed the members of a band called Breezer, the protagonists of this story. This group from the town of Hastings in southern England has written some songs in the style of early Oasis and then added Liam Gallagher’s voice using AI. The result is so convincing that, in keeping with the joke, they are advertising it as The Lost Tapes, as if it were material from the Manchester band itself that was never released.

“We have been working on songs since 2013. Our friends kept telling us to do something with them, so we formed a band in 2021. We did a handful of gigs, but it never took off and we quit. When we saw all that stuff about AI, it got us thinking about how cool it would be to have Liam Gallagher singing our songs because we had always thought that what we wrote as Breezer sounded a lot like Oasis. So Bobby, our singer, trained an AI model with Liam’s voice,” the band says.

Breezer’s bit of fun has had a positive response from listeners, some of them Oasis fans. “It’s crazy. It’s as if Liam magically went back in time and reformed Oasis with Noel,” says one listener. Others feel the same way: “Impressed with the songs and the AI replicating Liam’s voice. I like this much better than Liam and Noel’s solo albums”; “I can’t believe how good this is. We want more songs.” And there will be, because the group has announced a Volume 2 coming soon.

This first batch is made up of eight songs, with titles like Out of my mind, Forever, Alive and Tonight. The rock sound is reminiscent of the Manchester band’s early albums, the best of which are: Definitely Maybe (1994), (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (1995) and Be Here Now (1997). The voice generated by this technology sounds aggressive, languid and cocky, like Liam at his best. The group has called the project Aisis.

“Aisis is an alternate reality concept album imagining that Oasis would have continued to write music. Or maybe they all got together years later to write a record similar to the first three albums,” Breezer wrote on YouTube, where they have publicized the eight songs.

This latest initiative to influence music through the use of AI joins that of a song that used to AI to unite Drake and The Weeknd. Heart on My Sleeve is the creation of an anonymous music producer who has generated the voices of the two stars using AI. The track was posted on TikTok and went viral reaching 15 million plays. It was also posted on Spotify, where it added another 600,000 until Universal Music, the record label that manages some of the two singers’ rights decided to report the song to the authorities, and it was pulled from the platforms.

As for possible legal action, Breezer notes, “Well, the songs are ours, and we didn’t intend for it to have anything to do with Oasis. It is more of an homage or ‘in the style of’. We are not making money, and we had no idea it would explode like it did. That said, if the band’s legal representatives asked us to remove it, then we would do so. We are not trying to capitalize on their image or their work.” They add: “But I think it’s an interesting debate for the industry. People use other artists’ music all the time and use other artists’ work. The industry will have to adapt to new technology like this.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition