THEY CALLED IT AI SLOP
I CALLED IT A WAY THROUGH.
The world does not need more noise.
It needs more truth.
There is too much empty content now.
Too many songs with no blood in them.
Too many artists chasing algorithms instead of meaning.
Backroom Saints is not that.
It began with words.
My words.
Lines written from lived experience.
From football grounds.
From pubs.
From lost towns.
From men who say they are fine when they are not.
I write the songs.
I shape the stories.
I record my voice.
Then I use modern tools to build the sound around it.
That does not make the work fake.
It makes it possible.
I am dyslexic.
For years, my ideas moved faster than my ability to organise them. I could hear the feeling. I could see the scene. I could find the line. But getting it out cleanly was harder.
AI changed that.
Not by replacing me.
By helping me finish what was already in me.
For six months, I have been experimenting with music obsessively.
I have worked on around 100 tracks.
Most never made the cut.
The 18 tracks released under Backroom Saints are the strongest records from that process.
They came from writing, rewriting, recording, listening back, changing lines, remastering and starting again when it did not feel right.
That is not slop.
That is graft.
And I am improving.
Every track gets sharper.
Every vocal gets more confident.
Every song gets closer to the sound I hear in my head.
Out of that process, Backroom Saints became more than a music project.
It became a platform.
A place for songs, stories and visuals about the people modern culture keeps overlooking.
There is a difference between using technology to hide the absence of an idea and using technology to release one.
The music industry already uses tools everywhere.
Autotune.
Digital production.
Sample packs.
Vocal comping.
Algorithmic mastering.
Writing rooms.
Session musicians.
Ghostwriters.
Nobody calls that fake when it comes from the right side of the velvet rope.
But when ordinary people use new tools to tell their own stories, suddenly everyone becomes a purist.
Funny that.
I understand the concern.
There is AI slop everywhere.
Soulless songs.
Fake artists.
Stolen voices.
Content pumped out with no care, no craft, no human centre.
That should be challenged.
But do not confuse the tool with the intent.
A guitar can make a masterpiece or a racket.
AI is no different.
For me, it is a bridge.
A way for a working-class writer, singer and storyteller to turn ideas into finished records without waiting for permission from an industry that was never built for people like me.
I am taking this seriously.
It is the same thing I have been doing with my writing.
Taking messy feelings and turning them into words people can understand.
A lot of men do not need another lecture.
Their families do not need more noise.
They need clarity.
They need language for what is happening inside them.
That is what storytelling can do.
It can help a man understand himself.
It can help his wife understand him.
It can help his kids see that silence is not always strength.
Sometimes it is pain with no words.
That is what I want Backroom Saints to become.
Music with a purpose.
Songs that cut through the noise and say the thing people feel but cannot explain.
Because the subject matter is not artificial.
It is modern Britain.
Work that does not pay.
Towns that got left behind.
Men who disappear quietly.
Football lads getting older.
Pub lights.
Blackpool rain.
Pride and shame living in the same chest.
That is the world I write from.
My influence is Hemingway because he understood something simple:
You do not need to decorate pain.
You tell it clean.
Short lines.
Plain words.
Truth underneath.
That is what I am chasing.
Not perfection.
Recognition.
I want people to hear these songs and think:
“I know that bloke.”
“I know that town.”
“I have felt that.”
“That sounds like us.”
Music is not meant to be a private members’ club.
It is meant to carry human feeling.
The gatekeepers can argue about tools.
I care about the result.
Does it move people?
Does it say something?
Does it make someone feel less alone?
Does it put language around a life they could not explain?
That is the test.
The future of music will not be human versus machine.
That is too simple.
The real divide will be between empty content and work with a human centre.
Backroom Saints has a human centre.
My voice.
My writing.
My town.
My scars.
My humour.
My anger.
My hope.
The tools are modern.
The stories are old as anything.
A man trying to be heard.
A town trying to be seen.
A generation trying not to disappear.
Maybe the machines are not replacing humans.
Maybe they are finally giving forgotten humans a microphone.
Backroom Saints is live now.
Visit BackroomSaints.co.uk
Follow us on Instagram: @Backroom_Saints
Listen to the songs.Share the ones that sound like your town. Send them to someone who needs words for what they are carrying.