Sir Mick Jagger talks about how using ‘rubbish’ AI built his ‘confidence’

Sir Mick Jagger tried to use AI to find an album title.

The Rolling Stones front man was having trouble coming up with a name for the group's 2023 record, Hackney Diamonds, so he turned to the technology, and while it only offered "rubbish" suggestions, that gave the 82-year-old star more confidence in his own ideas.

When he was asked if the group would use AI to write songs, Mick told Sunday Times Culture magazine, “AI is a whole other conversation. The only time I used it was when I was looking for album titles for Hackney Diamonds, which was actually, I suppose, at the beginning of AI.”

"Because no one could agree, and I threw all these titles at it, and it came back with such rubbish, it didn’t help me at all,” he honestly opened up.

Mick continued, “I was saying, ‘These are my 12 album titles, give me some more,’ and of course in the end we never used any of them. But it can unstick you, and you think, ‘OK, that was rubbish,’ or ‘Mine are loads better than yours.’ It gives you confidence.”

Despite his recognisable tone, Mick's band mate, Keith Richards, thinks the front man expresses himself better on harmonica than with his vocals.

Keith expressed, “Mick expresses himself on harmonica probably in the fullest way that he can, even better than as a vocalist."

The instrument is used to great effect on the band's new album, Foreign Tongues, on a cover of Amy Winehouse's You Know I'm No Good.

Ronnie Wood was a friend of the late singer, who died from accidental alcohol poisoning in 2011, aged 27, and he is still saddened by her passing, saying, “She would go: ‘Oh Ronnie, what am I going to do?’ I said: ‘Look, everyone knows you’ve got vodka in the water bottle. Get it together and get on stage.’”

"But if you could get her up there and she stayed there, it’d be great. I’m sad because she didn’t do her full span. It was like saying goodbye to Billie Holiday again,” Keith Richards sadly mentioned of Amy Winehouse’s passing, whose song’s cover they used in their latest album, Foreign Tongues.