The Laid-off Blues is a satirical protest song about widespread layoffs, anxiety over AI-driven job displacement, and the political scapegoating that often accompanies economic uncertainty. The lyrics move through the competing groups people are encouraged to blame before redirecting attention toward the billionaires and corporate leaders largely insulated from the consequences experienced by workers.
The music video combines generated characters and situations with real news footage and imagery of market losses, political messaging, technology leaders, and economic disruption. The result uses humor and the familiar language of a blues song to express a serious frustration: the people most affected by a changing economy often have the least control over it.
I originated the concept and wrote the lyrics, then used Udio to develop the music. I created the principal still imagery with ChatGPT and used Kling to transform selected images into moving sequences. Those generated scenes allowed me to visualize the emotional experience of losing a job rather than depending entirely on literal news coverage.
I then intercut the AI-generated material with actual news footage and photographs, using documentary images to connect the song’s satire to recognizable events and public figures. Bold on-screen lyrics provide a consistent visual thread across sources with very different textures. The finished piece combines original writing, AI music generation, generative visual development, archival research, and traditional editing into a single authored point of view.