Tributes rolled in after the death of Dolly Parton last month. Jack White performed Jolene at a London gig. Kesha sang Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle to You), a single her mother wrote for the country music titan.
Even Pitbull stopped his Madison Square Garden show to memorialize Parton and all the other “powerful women” in the crowd. But one of the strangest – and most viral – eulogies did not come from a celebrity. It did not even come from a person.
Run Jolene, at just under five minutes, is an earworm of a country song, containing all the cliches of the genre: twangy singer, banjo licks, corny lyrics. Those lyrics concern Jolene, the fictional romantic rival made infamous by Parton. Heaven is filled with deceased celebrities who watch on in horror – or amusement – as Jolene bounces from cloud to cloud, or books it up marble staircases, trying to hide from Dolly.
Onlookers include the late Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Kenny Rogers, as well as Cher, who is still very much alive. On TikTok, YouTube and Spotify, the song credit is Country Mile, an “artist” with just over 6,000 monthly listeners (that’s not many). The project is textbook AI slop, seemingly released by an anonymous creator who calls their work “genre fluid ai vibes”.
But Run Jolene is not so universally panned: clips have been viewed more than 1.4m times on TikTok, with commenters raving: “I don’t give a flying fuck if this is AI or not! THIS IS FUCKING COOL!!”, “this is fun …think Dolly would love it ❤️”, and “Who says Jolene’s up there.” Run Jolene is only one part of a ghoulish online ecosystem of content dubbed “deathslop”. Anyone can create deathslop: all it takes is access to an AI image generator and the time required to type in a prompt.
Creators have shown Parton alongside a chummy Charlie Kirk and George Floyd, who welcome her as their “new neighbor” in the afterlife, or having tea with the Golden Girls. These tributes pop up quickly, reducing someone’s legacy to cheap content that panders for views. It is a dishonest portrayal at best, and inflicts pain at its worst.
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