Boy George

Dean Stockings

When Boy George first played his Culture Club bandmates a country-tinged hook of the song he was certain would go to No. 1, they told him it was “the worst idea ever.” He says he threatened to leave the band if it didn’t make the album, “absolutely convinced based on zero evidence that this song was going to be No. 1.” But he was right. “Karma Chameleon” made its way as the second single off 1983’s soul-steeped Colour by Numbers to spend three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and six weeks atop the U.K. singles chart. Today, the record has earned more than 900 million streams on Spotify alone while still commanding multi-million-dollar sync fees.

More than 40 years later, Boy George is once again championing an idea a lot of people find hard to swallow.

Timed to the singer’s 65th birthday, a new, AI-assisted version of “Karma Chameleon” is returning to the pop market as the flagship release for Artist Included, a new artist-first music and technology company that wants to use AI to put artists back in control of their own catalogs. Founded by entrepreneur Paul “PK” Kemsley and entertainment attorney and film producer Jeremy Rosen, with Planet Hollywood founder Robert Earl as Chairman of the Board, the company is built around a seemingly simple angle: artificial intelligence is not replacing artists, but working with them — and, ideally, earning them more money.

“Since AI arrived, the whole creative community has been up in arms and fearful, particularly in the movie world,” Earl shares in a sit-down with George amid a busy New York promotional schedule alongside his business collaborators. “Everyone’s been waiting to see how it was going to impact the music side…unauthorized AI is not going to do well. I think it’s a seminal moment; it just might take a little time for people to realize.”

Months ahead of the June 15 release of the “Karma Chameleon (Artist Included)” single, George came to the studio to sing the hit single again, sitting with the original in a way that required him to go back to the early ‘80s. Artist Included’s main technology partner, Syntiant, uses what’s described as “artist-approved tools” to support George’s vocal performance, developing its intelligence from previous demos and vocal recordings that the song’s original producer, Steve Levine, had kept over the years and consented to share for training. Syntiant’s tech nudges the new takes back toward the tone and feeling of the 1983 master while keeping every note authentically Boy George. “It’s him singing,” Earl adds, “but they managed to take all the tones and all of those emotions and got it back to where he was.”

For Boy George, the process was unexpectedly emotional.

 “As I’ve got older, I have definitely become much more conscious of what I’ve created,” the singer-songwriter-DJ shares. “ For years, I’ve struggled with the nostalgia aspect of my career and keeping control over what I’m doing now. I feel I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t have an issue with it anymore — this is me, this is what I created, it belongs to me. I don’t live in the past, but it’s kind of exciting to have some say over the destiny of this very iconic piece of my history. It has been like a child I lost control of. I had no influence over what it was doing and where it appeared.”

Now, he tells audiences on stage: “I lost this kid for a few years, but he’s back.”

Released in partnership with BMG Rights Management, the new “Karma Chameleon” takes music released when Boy George was ambitious young punk singer (“ the idea of career was boring to me as a teenager,” he says) and gives a chance at better business dealings when it comes to publishing after his original record contract has long since lapsed (“ the sort of deals that you do at the beginning of your career are not based on foresight, you’re only grateful to get a record deal, grateful that anyone wants to put you on TV”).

That sense of reclamation is central to the company’s business model, with the “Karma Chameleon” release, as well as Boy George’s creative comfort with it, serving as the first test.

“It needs a champion,” Earl adds. “It needs verification. There are so many different boxes and we’ve started to tick them,  but for the talent, for their management, for everyone involved to protect them, this will be the first test. Seeing how George is so comfortable with it, we’ve got lots of people that are targets that we’ve started discussions with their management, the lawyers, business managers, the talent themselves, the publishers.”

For artists whose recording deals have expired, Artist Included offers a way to create new, artist-owned masters and chase the long-term value that has long drifted away from the people who made the music.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Kemsley pointed to Virgin Voyages’ $4 million deal to license “Karma Chameleon,” in which about $2 million went to the owners of the master recording, and George, who has no ownership of his biggest song, received an appearance fee. “For decades, artists created the soundtrack to our lives while much of the long-term value moved away from the original creators,” Kemsley told the publication. “Used responsibly, AI can become one of the most powerful creative tools the music industry has ever seen.”

If the word “AI” still makes creatives flinch, you’re not alone — and Boy George knows the feeling.

“When PK said we’re going to do this, I was like, ‘Wow, can you do it? Is it even possible?’” He says. “I was not quite against it, but I didn’t believe it was possible.” His skepticism is enlightening, as few artists feel better positioned to discuss the gap between what looks threatening and what turns out to be liberating. After all, Boy George is the performer who arrived in the early '80s in a swirl of makeup, ribbons and gender-blurring style that a lot of the culture found genuinely alarming when visible, joyful androgyny read as provocation to the status quo.

Boy George hears a similar panic in the AI conversation now, but pushes back on the idea that any of this is brand new. “You could argue that the drum machine was a form of AI,” he offers. “It was just a different, more primitive version of it. Particularly in dance music, which I’ve been involved in for a long time, some of this technology was already being used…so what this has done is sped-up. It’s like the new iPhone — there’s always an update of an idea.”

Real anxieties around AI — its environmental toll, its effect on attention and mental health, the livelihoods it stands to upend — aren’t waved away by a warmer-sounding "Karma Chameleon," and Earl doesn’t pretend otherwise. "On the job side, it’s going to destroy things," he says, floating that a three-day work week will soon become the norm. Artist Included argues that the same technology can be pointed backward, to right an industry’s old wrongs and return ownership and income to artists never built into the deal. Earl adds how when a track gets placed in “a sync for an ad or a movie score, the artist is going to now feel very personally involved" — and motivated to promote it, rather than watching it drift by as lost income. The model’s pitch is built on consent, transparency, rights clearance, and creator participation to attempt to make AI additive rather than extractive.

George already uses AI as a creative sparring partner. While the likes of ChatGPT rarely hands him lyrics he keeps, he says it does something subtler: “What it can do is make you go, ‘Oh, I’ve got a better line,’” not unlike cracking open a thesaurus or rhyming dictionary when one’s stuck for a word.

There’s a satisfying final note in officially launching Artist Included with "Karma Chameleon." A practicing Buddhist, Boy George is quick to note that Buddhism doesn’t define karma as mean-spirited cosmic punishment. “It means action,” he says, “The choices you make create the heaven and hell you’re living.” A song he once couldn’t control becomes a deliberate act of reclamation thanks to a bold new venture.

“I think there was a certain point where I realized I was the only one who realized the '80s were over,” George says, laughing at himself. He’s made peace with the time and with the evolving life of a song that defined it.

As Earl puts it, the Artist Included venture with Boy George and future stars boils down to a single idea: “We are bringing the artists back into the party.”