NEW Rick Beato interview: The Moody Blues' Justin Hayward: Crafting Rock's Most Haunting Melodies [View all]

49 minutes long. This was uploaded to Rick's YouTube channel just yesterday, and it's a really good interview. I'm adding a note about one of the songs mentioned below the video.

Justin briefly mentions, a bit after 38 minutes in, that he now has a cover of Dream Academy's classic "Life In A Northern Town" out. I found out about it two months ago, and it's an okay cover, though not equal to Justin's great voice. I did not post it here in Music Appreciation then, will not post it here, and don't want anyone else posting it here because they made the video - VERY foolishly - using a lot of gawdawful AI images. Which they've had complaints about. The very first comment on the video on Justin's YouTube channel - a comment that has over 50 likes from people who agree with it - is, "Jesus, I hate AI Art." Mike Batt also uploaded the video to his YouTube channel, and he responded to complaints about their decision to use AI by saying that time and money were factors.

Which is NOT a good enough excuse, since just an image of the title and/or a photo of Justin and/or a single photo of a representative northern England town would have been 100% better than the AI slop they used instead. Justin disappointed a lot of fans with this. News of British artists opposing AI companies stealing their work has sometimes made the front pages of British papers since last year.

I'd been hoping they'd release a new video of the song without that AI slop, but they haven't. Incredibly disappointing, and I hope they learned from the backlash.