Now he’s thinkin’ ’bout me every night, oh
Is it that sweet? I guess so
Say you can’t sleep, baby, I know
That’s that me, espresso
WTF does that mean? That’s that me, espresso?
I guess that she’s so smokin’ hot that she has the same physiological effect on horny men as an overdose of caffeine or something?
Anyway, look, I’m sorry to be a dried-up, grumbling, superannuated fossil-in-waiting and all, but Jesus Christ on Horseback, popular music sucks these days. Just listen to this drivel. It sounds like it was written by ChatGPT. It sounds like goddam disco. It’s so blandly repetitive and unimaginative that it makes ABBA sound like Beethoven – no kidding, Dancing Queen is a masterpiece by comparison, at least a thousand times as good – and it’s now top of the pops. This is what it’s come to. It’s either this crap or the enraged rhythmic shouting of Drake or some other unaccountably angry millionaire hip-hop moron.
I’ll give you, it’s a great video, and no doubt about it, the girl has a truly world-class posterior, as the auteur behind the cinematography is at pains to point out to us, but c’mon.
Here I am, one foot in the grave, desperately waving the banner for real songwriting by real artists, and losing yet another battle, as indeed I lose them all. I used to think Taylor Swift was a little formulaic and sort of facile. She’s a musical colossus next to this Carpenter woman, even if it is Max Martin and other professional songwriters backstopping her at every turn. At least the teams of pros feeding Taylor her raw material know how to make an interesting key change every once in a while.
You know, I thought I was joking, but it occurs to me that it’s entirely possible that this button-pushing, monotonic, virtual rhythm track of a danceable pop toon really was written by AI. That’s probably the way we’re headed. Some frigging algorithm, having memorized every song it can scrape out of the internet, making a mockery of copyright laws along the way, will be assembling the Top 40 out of regurgitated samples that it figures go well together, while making the vocal sound exactly like a young Paul McCartney. Yup. I can feel it coming.
Meanwhile, only two people are going to read this, at least one of whom will comment I think it’s catchy.
the needlefish 