Haven ft. Kaitlin Aragon – I Run

[Jorja Smith’s label] said it believes “both versions of the track infringe on Jorja’s rights and unfairly take advantage of the work of all the songwriters with whom she collaborates”…

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[3.00]Ian Mathers: Feels kind of like the best bit of a longer, serviceable enough track that you pull out to use as a link during a DJ set. A fun little diversion, but it’s not exactly going to stick with you.
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Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Genuinely Googled if Haven was an AI artist after my first listen, before (mercifully) finding the artists Insta. The nicest thing I have to say about “I Run” is that Kaitlin Aragon sounds extremely dedicated to the conceit of drowning and sounding out of breath.
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Al Varela: Would have been a big fat [0] if they kept the AI vocals. It’s bad enough that streaming services allow AI songs to be slipped into their algorithm for unsuspecting people using autoplay, we don’t need actual viral hits to be enabling this bullshit further. Now that they did get a real vocalist for the song though, we’re just left with a song that wasn’t even good to begin with. A nothing snippet built to play in the background of TikTok slop for your eyes to glaze over and your ears to tune out hearing the same song on every video over and over again. No thanks.
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Iain Mew: Rerecording songs with a soundalike because a sample couldn’t be cleared is an age-old practice — “Gym and Tonic”/”Gymtonic” in 1998 comes to mind. Usually, as then, it’s for the worse. This isn’t a case of an uncleared sample, though, but something rather different. The original AI-powered version of “I Run” is tough to even find, but based on some snippets, Kaitlin Aragon has done an impressive job. Her vocal sounds exactly like an incoherent averaged-out set of signifiers.
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Nortey Dowuona: The first knee jerk reaction was fear. The second was panic. The final one was sadness. But then came anger.
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Scott Mildenhall: Don’t back down, double down. You could go in for half measures about “just embracing that it does sound like her”, or you could just hype the machine further. Say the robots made you do it! That you had no choice but to channel their reconstituted beats into Jorjan architecture. Because really, did you push the button, or did the button push you? If you don’t need quality control, you might not need any control.
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Will Adams: Top of the Slops.
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