A song about immigrants whose music, vocals and artwork were generated entirely using artificial intelligence has made it into the top 50 most listened to songs in Germany. This may be a first for a leading music market.

Verknallt in einen Talahon is a parody song that interweaves modern lyrics – many of which are based on racial stereotypes about immigrants – with 1960s schlager pop.

The song charts at number 48 in Germany, the world’s fourth-largest music market. Less than a month after its release, the song has 3.5 million streams on Spotify and is at number three on the streaming platform’s global viral chart.

Creator Josua Waghubinger, who goes by the stage name Butterbro, said he created the song’s chorus by feeding his own lyrics into Udio, a generative artificial intelligence tool that can generate vocals and instrumentation based on simple text prompts.

He used the music tool to add a verse after the chorus received a positive response on TikTok. “I think there’s still enough creative freedom in the song to make it a creative project,” the IT professional and hobby musician told Die Klangküche (The Sound Kitchen), a German podcast about music production.

The song has attracted attention in the German media not only because of the production technology used, but also because of its lyrical content. Translated as In Love with a Talahon , the song refers to a German version of the Arabic expression “taeal huna”, which means “come here”, but is now commonly used in Germany to describe groups of young men with an immigrant background, often with derogatory undertones.

The song’s lyrics parody the classic “good girl falls for bad boy” storylines of 1960s songs like Shangri-Las’ Leader of the Pack. The AI-generated singer’s object of desire wears “a Louis belt, a Gucci bag, and Air Max sneakers” and “smells like a whole perfumery.”

When her lover gets angry, she thinks, “He’s as sweet as baklava” – presumably an attempt to identify him with Turkish culture.

Waghubinger said he wanted to make a song that poked fun at overt macho behavior “with a twinkle in the eye and without discrimination,” but added that his overriding motivation was to produce a song that would go viral on social media. “That was the challenge I set myself,” he told Die Klangküche.

But Marie-Luise Goldmann, culture editor of the conservative newspaper Die Welt, said the song walked a fine line between parody and discrimination.

“The mix of immigrant youth culture with German schlager conservatism alone will excite as many listeners as it will offend,” she said. “The talahon (in the song) doesn’t hide his backward gender image, but the question is whether he (Butterbro) trivializes it, glorifies it or attacks it.”

Felicia Aghaye, a writer for the music magazine Diffus, called the song’s popularity “doubly problematic” because “talahon” was an established insulting word among young Germans and Austrians towards migrants.

“For example, right-wing groups use the term to create a bogeyman and fuel Islamophobia and xenophobia,” she said. “The problem is that Butterbro doesn’t seem to understand the negative issues surrounding the term.

“His track in a way helps bring the term into the mainstream.”

Numerous AI-generated songs in a similar style are circulating on German social media, combining the sweet sound of 1960s MOR schlager pop with crudely sexualized lyrics.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used by music producers to generate vocals in the style of famous singers. In 2023, the Beatles released Now and Then, a song that used AI assistance to extrapolate John Lennon’s vocals.

In April, a song featuring an AI-generated version of Tupac Shakur’s voice was uploaded to Canadian rapper Drake’s Instagram account. However, the song disappeared after the late rapper’s lawyers threatened a lawsuit.