Country music superstar Luke Bryan kicked off 2026 feeling pumped about judging “American Idol” for the eighth time, spending the summer on tour, and then releasing his ninth studio album this fall, “Signs.”
What the hitmaker didn’t expect was to wind up repeatedly defending himself against online claims that his newest songs were created with A.I. rather than by himself and a collective of hard-working songwriters. In the days before his new album’s September 18 release, he admitted to The Tennessean that all the jokes and memes about his first two singles, “Fish Hunt Golf Drink” and “Down Goes the Whiskey,” have made him quite “frustrated.”
Luke Bryan Says He ‘Never Imagined’ People Would Think He Used AI to Write a Song
The online chatter began in the spring, with the release of “Fish Hunt Golf Drink,” with numerous young influencers taking issue with the lyrics, claiming they sounded like an AI-generated song. Bryan clapped back in the comment sections of some memes they posted, telling one to “chill on the Adderall.”
He told the Tennessean, “You know, I never would have imagined that there would be some underground online viral thing that people would … jump on, (saying) that it was AI. I mean, when I’m thinking about AI in music, my brain is so far from using it to write. I never imagined that other people are so far down the path of thinking people are using it in that context.”
“When I saw a lot of people saying that I AI’d something, at that point, I’m just frustrated that that is the narrative when, in the room, we write a song,” he continued. “We write the song, we high-five, and we’re fired up about it. I go record the song and … in my opinion, this song’s fun. This song is what I try to achieve quite frequently.”
Bryan said it’s a “different world” than when he started out in the industry. He noted that every music video and interview gets commented on and shared via social media, so when a particular narrative catches fire, it’s hard to contain it.
He also said he feels for his songwriting collaborators, telling the Tennessean, “It’s the world we live in, but I just never want people that write the songs that I record — they don’t necessarily deserve negativity.”
Luke Bryan Admits He Didn’t Put Much Thought Into His Album Name
Though Bryan hopes fans understand he puts a lot more effort into writing and recording songs than it would take to use AI, he admitted to Taste of Country that he didn’t put a whole lot of thought into the name of his new album, “Signs.”
“I mean, ‘Crooked Rows of Corn’ could have been a good name, too,” he joked. “This is my ninth one. I’ve named a lot of albums at this point and, you know, volume nine didn’t sound cool.”
“You got 14, 15 songs you’ve recorded and you’re like, ‘Uh, you know, just take a dart, throw it at the wall,'” Bryan continued. “It landed on ‘Signs’ and that’s about how we picked it.”
