Creator Member Catch-Up with Singer/Songwriter Michelle Shocked
This week, we’re pleased to catch up with singer/songwriter Michelle Shocked. We first interviewed her in 2016, and since then, her creative career has continued to advance. After reading her catch-up blog, be sure to check out Michelle’s online channels.
How has your creative career evolved since we last spoke?
In 2019, the Guggenheim Museum’s Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: The Untold Story featured The Death of Michael Stewart, informally known as Defacement, created by Jean-Michel Basquiat, and included Short Sharp Shocked, my 1988 album cover photo in a police chokehold; In 2023, I received the Jacques Ellul Award for Outstanding Media Ecology Activism from the Media Ecology Association. And this week we completed the final chapter in my audio memoir, Bootleg This!, a “daring tale of artistic resilience in defiance of AI’s algorithmic abattoir!”
In 2017 I joined a punk band, Spike Polite & Sewage, as bassist; in 2018 I created an as-yet-unreleased Cuban rumba song cycle, “Musical Chairs: A Comparsa for Artists’ Rights”; in 2024 my New Music song cycle, in collaboration with Kathleen Supové and arranger Randy Woolf, Shocking Red, concerned with the existential threats of artificial intelligence, premiered at Hunter Dunbar Projects. My creative community, Composers Concordance, a longstanding collective of New Music composers based in NYC, continually inspires me! And my independent musician activist community, Music Workers Alliance, endlessly encourages me!
How has copyright continued to help fuel your growth?
Since we last spoke in December 2016, copyright has both protected my work and become an important source of inspiration. Since the CASE Act passed, I fought (and won!) several claims against infringement, and will continue fighting against fair “abuse” and labor devaluation by sharing my own story in collaboration with SueMedia Productions. Bootleg This! will premiere in a transmedia production at the Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2026.
Is there anything related to copyright that you want to learn more about? What resources do you use to learn?
Yes! I need to understand HR 6028, the proposed legislation changing the appointment authority for the Librarian of Congress and the Register of Copyrights. Although public debate centers on presidential authority over the Register, apparently the “domino effect” may reopen the constitutional foundation of the Copyright Royalty Board. It’s very complicated!
I also want to understand Kogon v Google, an independent musician class action filed against Google over copyright infringements and business practices related to its AI music generators!
I wish someone would help me understand how IPEC, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, works in the UK. Understanding the small claims process in the UK might help with loopholes built into the CASE Act, but I can’t afford £900 an hour for a barrister to explain it to me. Oh! One more! I reeeaally wish someone would help me understand Moghadam v United States.
Where do you draw inspiration from? Is there a specific creator you look up to?
I rely on creator bloggers such as David Lowery’s TheTrichordist.com and Chris Castle’s MusicTechPolicy.com and their ArtistRightsWatch.com blog. I rely on Marc Ribot at MusicWorkersAlliance.org, and Pat Buchta at AustinTexasMusicians.org, as well as Rick Carnes at SongwritersGuild.com and David Wolfert at MusicAnswers.org and George Johnson, the “angriest songwriter in D.C.” These creators have fed my soul.
Have you ever experienced writer’s block? How do you overcome it?
I don’t experience writer’s block because I don’t write songs. I write song cycles. In other words, I don’t begin writing until I have a concept so developed that it has to be expressed in ten songs. When I first started writing songs, it felt like they fell out of the sky. Now I tend lyrical vineyards.
How has AI technology impacted your works and career?
Mine is a fiercely original voice shaped by Texas folk, blues, with storytelling and spiritual conviction. In 2013, remarks made during a workshop performance intended to road-test new material from Indelible Women (a still-unrecorded song cycle I consider my magnum opus) were bootlegged and uploaded to YouTube, which triggered a high-visibility defamation campaign fueled by agentic AI and “outrage metrics.” I was effectively banished from the public eye for more than a decade. Rather than retreat, I fanned the flames by withdrawing my entire catalog from distribution, while continuing to create new work and re-examining a life spent at the intersection of art, faith, politics, and free expression. The result is the release of my audio memoir, Bootleg This!.
If you could share one piece of advice with other creators, what would it be?
Trust that—slightly around the corner, out of sight, we can’t see it yet—there is a moral arc that bends toward justice, a victory struggle with a score: Humanity 1, Machines 0. I believe in the power of music to tell complicated truths with simple melodies. You can’t take the art out of the artist. Art has power. And stolen art has potent power.
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