AI goes fast, but it doesn’t always go smoothly. Take AI ‘actress’ Tilly Norwood’s first, execrable music video. On the one hand, it’s a milestone in generative AI, bringing together a digital concoction, AI music, lyrics, and the work of 18 humans who, I presume, don’t know any better.
I’m heartened by Take the Lead, not for its earworm lyrics, but because it is so, so bad on so many levels.
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Music that makes you hate everything
“High concept” is not an anathema to music videos, so perhaps I should cut Particle6 some slack. It’s just that the combination of visuals and lyrics is so hackneyed that they make you want to punch your laptop.
The 4:16-minute track (why is it so long?!) starts over a dealized London at sunrise (or sunset) and a backlit Norwood singing to the camera:
“When they talk about me
They don’t see
The human spark, the creativity.”
Poor Tilly.
It only goes downhill from there.
Lines like “I’m just a tool, but I’ve got a life,” would be laughable if they weren’t sung with such programmed sincerity, which just makes them pathetic.
There is a non-too-subtle pitch in the lyrics, one directed, I think, at the actors who are rightfully angry about Norwood’s existence.
“Actors, it’s time to take the lead
Create the future, plant the seed
Don’t be left out, don’t fall behind,” sings Norwood.
Calling on actors to not hate, but join her and, perhaps, create their own AI vatars.
Obviously, some actors are already creating AI versions of at least their voices (looking at you, Matthew McCounoughy and Michael Caine), but this is something more extreme.
Norwood sings about scale, growth, evolution, and, especially, “AI’s not the enemy, it’s the key.”
I know, I know, you’ve ceased reading because your head just exploded and brain matter is covering the screen. I get it.
I guarantee this is the only music video that will make you hate:
- Pink dolphins
- Blow up flowers
- Pink sequined rope aerialists
- Flamingoes flying with hard drive keychains
- Tilly Air
- Tillyverse
Take the Lead is also bad because of its awful, synthesized music, reportedly created using Suno, and Tilly’s seemingly auto-tuned but obviously not, synthesized voice.
The imagery is chaotic and, in the absence of a story or theme, is a hackneyed visual metaphor: Norwood riding through a pink wall while she sings, “We can break down that wall.”
If there is a story, it’s all about Tilly’s awesome artificial life that includes Tilly Airlines, Tillyverse, a giant plate of cookies that she casually discards, adoring fans who want to have her babies (ick), and her flying through life and the sky on an inflatable pink flamingo.
It’s all pointless, just like Tilly Norwood.
This is not singing it’s bad mimicry
After all the programming, prompts, and design craft, Tilly Norwood still doesn’t know how to sing. Oh, yes, she sings, but does so without blinking or, in some instances, breathing. During her last crucial note, Norwood clearly inhales as shes singing. I don’t know much about vocalists, but that seems impossible.
Toward the end of this obvious AI anthem, Norwood sings:
“They say it’s not real, that it’s fake
But I am still human, make no mistake
My soul’s in every move I take.”
But the more she sings, the clearer it becomes that Norwood is fake, and as empty and artificial as those garden flamingos you see on Florida lawns. At least those you can kick over.
When I asked Gemini and ChatGPT to rate the song, they were both far less critical. Gemini described it as a “meta” moment and a “a manifesto wrapped in a musical theatre bow,” adding that it’s “technically flawless” but ultimately “4-star tech demo but a 3-star pop song.”
ChatGPT said, “It sounds like a polished Spotify pop track… because AI models are trained on thousands of them.”
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
