Music

Boy George says band will be ‘fired’ if they refuse to play AI song live

Aug 10
Written by Jack Wetherill

Boy George. (Karwai Tang/WireImage)

Boy George. (Image: Karwai Tang/WireImage)

Boy George has said he will fire members of his band who are “questioning” whether they will perform his controversial AI song “We Will Dance Again” live with him.

In an Instagram video posted on 9 August, the 65-year-old addressed backlash to the track and suggested other musicians would have tried to stop him writing it.

“I’m not lazy, the truth is if I tried to write ‘We Will Dance Again’ with any musician, they would have gotten in my way,” he said.

Boy George added: “Even now that the song is written, there are people in my band who are questioning whether they will perform it with me and those people will be fired.”

The track was released on 27 July. It has drawn criticism for lyrics including “You say Genocide, I say war” and “When you’re attacked, that’s what the army’s for”.

On June 23, a United Nations independent commission declared that Israel is committing “genocide” and “atrocity crimes by deliberately targeting Palestinian children”.

It also reportedly features an AI-generated reggae backing track.

Boy George defended his use of AI, saying: “I don’t need gatekeepers and one of the great things about AI is it removes all the interference, all the human interference,” before insisting: “I wrote that song, the lyrics are mine the melody is mine.”

Backlash to the song

In the same video, Boy George argued that working with other musicians can make it harder for him to create, saying that if he tried to write the track “with a human being, they would have gotten in my way. So thank god for AI”.

The latest row follows him falsely claimed Dua Lipa said Israel “should be wiped off the face of the Earth”.

Since the song’s release, the singer was branded a “terrible performer” by a former co-star and was pulled out of Jesus Christ Superstar by his manager.