Former Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar recently revealed he’s been working on a new collaboration with Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger and Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. The project started when Kroeger wrote a song inspired by Hagar’s style.
Sammy Hagar, Chad Kroeger, and Tommy Lee Team Up on New Song
He even used AI to alter his own voice so it would sound like Hagar’s, but ultimately decided the real thing was needed. Hagar agreed to sing on the track, while Lee came in to add drums.
Hagar described the experience as spontaneous to Ultimate Classic Rock, saying they went into the studio without much of a plan and just had fun recording. A simple social media post about the session ended up going viral, drawing millions of views even though, according to Hagar, they still don’t know if the song will ever be released. For now, the details remain under wraps, as Hagar said it’s mainly Kroeger’s project.
“That’s so crazy. It’s like, Chad wrote a great song. I mean a great song,” he enthuses. “He called me and said, ‘Dude, you know what a fan I am. I’ve been listening to you my whole life and and you’ve been such an inspiration. You always write these really upbeat songs. You know, about making people feel good and giving them encouragement [with songs] like ‘Dreams.’
“He’s going, ‘Dude, I want you to sing on on the song.’ And I go, ‘Of course, I’ll sing on your song.’ So I go in and Tommy Lee, you know, was going to play a little drum part on there too, because they decided they wanted to get some other people and do this event. But I don’t want to give too much away, because this is Chad’s thing, this is Nickelback.
“Chad and I’ve been laughing about it ever since, because whenever you you put up an Instagram post that has no premeditated thought to it and it’s interesting enough, it blows up,” Hagar concludes. “It blew up, you know, it’s getting like, three million views and stuff. [But]it was just meant to be a quick little silly thing. And honestly, I was being honest — we don’t know what we’re doing, right? Who knows if it’ll even come out. We just went in the studio and just recorded a song.”
Wolfgang Van Halen recently talked about artificial intelligence in music. He said generative AI is “a waste of time” because it takes away from real creativity. In his view, AI should be used for practical things like engineering, not for replacing musicians and artists.
Wolfgang Van Halen Pushes Back Against AI in Music
Wolfgang Van Halen recently talked about artificial intelligence in music in a new interview with the Springfield, Missouri radio station Q102. He said generative AI is “a waste of time” because it takes away from real creativity. In his view, AI should be used for practical things like engineering, not for replacing musicians and artists.
He also criticized record labels for using AI to save money, since it allows them to hire fewer people while making them do more work. Wolfgang admitted that AI can help in small ways, like cleaning up old recordings or handling technical tasks, but he believes it will never match human creativity.
“I think generative A.I. is really stupid. I just think it’s dumb. I think it’s a waste of time. I think A.I. should be putting mufflers on cars, not doing art for us. But other people feel differently. That’s how I feel. I think it’s dumb. I think it’s just I don’t know. It’s not my thing.”
Yeah, it’s lame. Well, you know why? ‘Cause it allows you to pay less people. All the people at the top see the line go up because they’re paying less people to do more work with less money. It’s kind of the way every industry is, unfortunately, like that at the end of the day, which sucks. It’s never really about what’s being made. It’s how quickly you can make it and shovel it out to people.”
“I think that whole thing that came out with Paul McCartney using A.I. on this new Beatles thing, everybody was trying to make it seem like he was using generative A.I., making a fake John Lennon sing, which wasn’t what they were doing. They were using a thing to separate his vocals from an old demo. But, of course, nobody reads the article; they just read the tweet and they get pissed off without even informing themselves.”
All of this comes after Sammy Hagar actually teamed up with a Nickelback singer, making the whole situation even more interesting.
