Is this What We Want? album promotional video still with track-listing of silent album.
Image taken from promotional video for Is This What We Want? silent album

A new Kate Bush studio recording dropped unexpectedly today? Well, kind of, yes! As we saw in her recent Christmas message, the challenges and concerns posed by AI technology are not far from Kate’s mind of late and in a letter in today’s UK Times newspaper she joins many prominent artists and writers in a protest at the UK government’s AI copyright proposals. Many media reports single out Kate’s involvement in their headlines this morning. The campaign has paid for prominent wrap-around paid advertising on all major UK print newspapers this morning with the slogan “Make it Fair”.

Paid for advertising by the campaign on all major UK newspapers this morning

The letter states “There is no moral or economic argument for stealing our copyright. Taking it away will devastate the industry and steal the future of the next generation.” It is signed by Simon Beaufoy, Barbara Broccoli, Kate Bush, Stuart Camp, Matthew Dunster, Sam Fender, Helen Fielding, Rachel Fuller, Sir Stephen Fry, David Furnish, Dame Pippa Harris, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, Sir Elton John, Paul King, Simon Le Bon, Dua Lipa, Alastair Lloyd Webber, Lord Lloyd-Webber, Sir Paul McCartney, Martin McDonagh, Sir Michael Morpurgo, Lucy Prebble, Sir Simon Rattle, Philip Ridley, Michael Rosen, Dame Hannah Rothschild, Ed Sheeran, Sting, Sir Tom Stoppard, Pete Townshend, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Matthew Warchus, Jeanette Winterson, Andrew Wylie.

As part of this campaign, a new “silent” album, called “Is This What You Want?” has been released today on streaming platforms including here on Spotify. Kate has written about the project on her official site.

Over one thousand musicians are jointly releasing this album today to protest the UK government’s planned changes to copyright law.

If these changes go ahead, the life’s work of all the country’s musicians will be handed over to AI companies for free. None of us have a say in it.

The UK is full of pioneering, highly creative and imaginative artists. The government’s willingness to agree to these copyright changes shows how much our work is undervalued and that there is no protection for one of this country’s most important assets: music.

Each track on this album features a deserted recording studio. Doesn’t that silence say it all?

I’m very happy to have contributed a track to this project and to join the protest.

Please help protect the music makers and our heartfelt work. We make it for you, not for it to be taken and used against us.

In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?

Kate

The recordings of dormant music studios and performance spaces, represents the impact on artists’ livelihoods if the government pushes ahead with its plans, according to Ed Newton-Rex, the British composer and former AI executive behind the idea. He warns that livelihoods are under threat from these proposed changes to copyright law. According to an article in The Guardian today, “…the album contains 12 recordings with more than 1,000 artists credited as co-writers, with the individual artist behind each of the dozen “silent” tracks uncredited. However, it is understood that Kate Bush has recorded one of the dozen tracks in her studio. Bush said: “In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?”

The 12 track titles spell out the following sentence: The British Government Must Not Legalise Music Theft To Benefit AI Companies. And we note that the final silent track 12, “Companies” does faintly feature the birdsong of a dawn chorus, a lot of cat purring sounds and what sounds like the sipping of hot tea (at the 3 minute 10 second mark)!! So, do we think this is Kate’s contribution to the project? Listen and see what you think.

Is this what we want? Album cover artwork