OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

Well maybe, but until it can actually listen to the music and at least mimic a human response to it, it's not going to write a half-decent music review.

It could just call everything shit and make you feel dumb for liking it

maybe those people were AI all along, makes sense.

These posts are going to seem so quaint after 1 or 2 years of exponential improvement in the technology.

That's why it's important to clown early and clown often while it's still shit

O noes Rockys Basilisk don't hurt me lol

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (That I Disagree With the Computer's Boygenius Rating)

this is supposed to be in the style of a 2002 Pitchfork review, I give ChatGPT a D-minus

Liz Phair's 1993 debut album, "Exile in Guyville," has long been heralded as a landmark release in the world of indie rock. A critical darling upon its release, the album has maintained its status as a touchstone of the genre for nearly three decades. But what is it about this album that continues to captivate listeners, even in 2023?

For starters, the songwriting on "Exile in Guyville" is top-notch. Phair's lyrics are sharp, witty, and often confrontational, touching on themes of sexuality, gender dynamics, and the perils of youth. Her voice is simultaneously vulnerable and confident, imbuing each track with a sense of urgency and authenticity.

Musically, the album draws heavily from the lo-fi sound that was popular in the early '90s, but Phair's pop sensibilities keep the songs from feeling too rough around the edges. From the crunchy guitars of "6'1"" to the acoustic strumming of "Divorce Song," each track is imbued with a distinct personality that keeps the listener engaged.

Of course, it's impossible to discuss "Exile in Guyville" without addressing its context. The album was conceived as a response to The Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main St.," and its exploration of the male-dominated rock scene of the time is a crucial part of its legacy. Phair's lyrics are unflinching in their examination of the ways in which women are often marginalized and objectified in music, and her refusal to shy away from these topics was a bold statement in 1993.

If there's one criticism that can be leveled at "Exile in Guyville," it's that some of the songs can feel a bit repetitive. The lo-fi sound and simple song structures can make it easy for tracks to blend together upon first listen. However, this is a minor quibble, and the album's strengths more than make up for any perceived weaknesses.

All in all, "Exile in Guyville" is a classic of the indie rock canon for a reason. Its incisive songwriting, unique sound, and fearless attitude continue to inspire new generations of musicians and listeners alike. Highly recommended.

Her voice is simultaneously vulnerable and confident

So how does it come up with an "observation" like this, which doesn't seem to be taken verbatim from something else on the Web? Does it pick and choose from lines which I do see online, like Phair's 25-year-old voice—as caustic and funny as it was candid and vulnerable and a girl from suburban Chicago with an electric guitar who sang explicitly about her sex drive and self-confidence with no hint of pretenses or pleasantries?

Seems plausible for a computer to take two opposing adjectives used to describe her voice and put them together with "simultaneously" to imply some depth in its observation.

Yeah I mean it's obviously plausible (it did it, after all!)... just wondering how it, like, technically works

Generative AI (at least at the moment) is both mind-boggling impressive and "yeah, so what?" banal, at the same time... it's hard to wrap my head around.

(I guess you might say it's... "simultaneously banal and impressive, imbuing the reader with a sense of both skepticism and discomfort")

god, this sucks so bad ... not just the writing but the sheer existence, and the future. :(

xxxpost - Part of the AI program combs the web for content and another part of it is programed to put that content into sentences that mimic human writing. By "plausible", I meant that it wouldn't be hard for a programmer to tell it to take two opposing adjectives describing a noun from the web and present them as "noun is simultaneously adjective 1 and adjective 2" to give the reader pause to consider how the noun could be described by both adjectives simultaneously and interpret that as some kind of human insight.

Is it actually part of its programming, to do that specific thing ("take two opposing adjectives...")? Or has it "learned" on its own that that type of construction is often found in the style of writing it's mimicking (review writing, in this case)?

the latter aiui

one thing that might help is that if you search just for the phrase "simultaneously vulnerable and confident" you do get plenty of results: none specifically referring to Phair that I saw, but many of them are about music/singing and some include the word "voice" as well.

you have to keep in mind it doesn't "know" anything about Liz Phair, obvs, it's trying to guess what a natural speaker would say in response to your prompt

There are plenty of Liz Phair articles that contain the words "vulnerable" and "confident" but not in the same sentence.

Also whatever program was used for that pavement listicle performed far worse than chapgpt did with Liz Phair or perhaps the scope of picking and describing the 10 best Pavement songs was too broad for it whereas emulating a review of one of the most talked about albums of the 90s should be right in it's wheelhouse.

I have tried to pay as little attention as possible to AI aside from shitposting-quality prompts, what sticks out most to me (with the Phair review) is the choppiness - it's competent but on the level of a high school sophomore grudgingly writing a short essay. I don't know if stronger prompts have generated anything with any kind of human flair.

I think that with AI chat bots at least, the amount of "learning" that they do is overstated. At their base, they only do what they've been told to do. The "voice" of their output is just reverse engineered sentence diagramming. They don't understand language any more than we humans understand our own consciousness. We input a sentence, they take our words and search for other applicable words to fulfil our command and they put what they find back into sentences. The words that they output don't mean anything to them, they're only concerned with the words we input and what the words in their code tell them to do with them.

The danger isn't that AI will become conscious and destroy us, it's that humans will mistakenly use it to destroy ourselves.

The impressive/startling thing to me – putting aside the arguably mediocre quality of the output, when compared to actual human work – is how well they "understand" such thin/basic prompts, and rich (and quick) their output is. Y'know, this part – they take our words and search for other applicable words to fulfil our command and they put what they find back into sentences. It's one thing to say it, and another to see it at work with a command like, Write a Liz Phair review.

the fact that what made the AI lightbulb go on for morrisp is a fake "Exile in Guyville" review... that just makes me feel like, these are my people here.

(those of you who aren't chatbots, anyway)

Across North and South Philly neighborhoods, two dozen or so rappers were defining a fierce local style: halting but high-velocity, herky-jerk but smooth, slick but hard.

today's pfork archive review lol

(not saying the review as a whole is bad, just funny timing)

Baffling choices aside, I’m kind of shocked this gauche and incompetent piece was let out the door:

https://www.avclub.com/the-cure-best-songs-ranked-1850397749/slides/33

yeah i just read that and thought: i don't *think* this was written by AI but it'd make me feel better if it was

cool pop sensibilities you got there, bro.

The writing in that piece made me wince a few times, but for better or worse there seemed to be something human, callow, in it. Like I felt embarrassment for a person rather than a website.

I wasn't expecting Fight to be mentioned only 13 words in

yeah, was gonna say. nothing to do with the writing, but some of the picks are a little... outside of the usual consensus.

(not necessarily bad, just don't think i've ever seen "fight" rated like that. by anybody.)

it's just junk made by someone who googled the cure for a half hour and then wrote it. you get what you pay for.

this, on the other hand, delighted me: https://www.theringer.com/music/2023/5/10/23714711/the-cure-best-songs-ranked-tour

not the worst music writing ever, but who knew that the best albums of 2013 were 25 albums from pitchfork's year-end list in a slightly different order plus 5 albums by huge rock acts?
https://uproxx.com/indie/best-albums-of-2013-ranked-10-years-later/

not the worst but certainly the most mediocre

this is some hilarious head-in-the-sand stuff:

At the time that he put out Southeastern, Jason Isbell was a journeyman Americana artist who many people assumed had already peaked as a songwriter when he was in Drive-By Truckers. For that reason, the love for Southeastern took a while to build, as critics simply weren’t used to paying close attention to this guy. But over time, the narrative of Southeastern proved irresistible.

people just weren't paying enough attention to indie rock music in...*checks notes*...2013

it's not that southeastern proved irresistible, but the narrative of southeastern did.

astonishing ability to craft a paragraph with zero ideas in it

Are we sure Hyden didn’t farm that out to AI?

the chance blurb is funny bcuz he explains the rather obvious context of the whole thing but then doesn't actually say whether he thinks the album holds up artistically or not, when it's, for the reasons he states, prob the most interesting re-evaluation of anything on this list. i guess that would've required actual work, but still...

As we’ll see, this is the year when the 2010s really began in a musical sense, while a lot of the trends that were popular in the previous decade fell away.

still waiting for the 2020s to begin

"Acid Rap was released about three months after Barack Obama was inaugurated for his second term. But rather than represent a new beginning, that album now feels like the tail end of the original Obama optimism from his first term."

5. Kurt Vile, Wakin On A Pretty Daze
Just to demonstrate my objectivity: This is my favorite album of 2013. It’s the one I have played the most. It’s the one that makes me happiest when it is on. It’s the one that evokes the happiest memories. But it’s not the best album of the year. It’s among the best, but it’s not the best.

I'm definitely going to listen to this record

"Back then, the political centrism that Obama promoted was still in vogue, which cleared a path in pop culture for feel-good, middle-of-the-road rappers. Musically, this was signified by the old-school ’60s and ’70s soul that Obama adopted as an unofficial soundtrack, most often in the guise of Stevie Wonder, possibly the most universally liked living American musician."

Wait, so the feel-good rappers were not musical?

Here’s a hypothetical that helps to put this album in perspective: If Haim did not exist, would Taylor Swift have made 1989? I honestly don’t think so.

i do agree w/ him that modern vampires of the city is essentially a perfect album tho

this is honestly one of the funniest things i've read recently, just completely smooth brain, vacant and dressed up in quasi academic b.s., truly amazing

https://americansongwriter.com/the-often-overshadowed-meaning-behind-rock-and-roll-hoochie-koo-by-rick-derringer/

Not clicking on that but the URL is making me laugh, so thanks.

I tried with that Hyden thing, but a) I have no memory of roughly 20 of those 25 albums, have certainly never listened to them, so who cares, and b) some of those blurbs are present-day-AV-Club lazy. Like, if you hit Chuck Klosterman in the head with a hammer, this is the level of prose you'd get.

xpost I'd expect more from the author of articles like "8 Wham songs you didn't know were written solely by George Michael"