My editors made me review the Anna Indiana song without telling me it was AI

[The song was released this week on X, and its creators say it’s the first to be completely generated using AI. We stripped the audio from the video and deleted the intro, so Dan had no context before listening.]

“Betrayed by this Town” is what I suppose this song I’m blind-taste-test reviewing is titled, whether it’s written by a young, earnest songwriter aiming for an early up-and-coming Taylor Swift vibe, a team of song doctors with the same goal, or some sort of AI bot that efficiently knocked it out at a push of a button.

There’s a crackly sound that turned up in the background as I listened on my phone. Trying to be analog in a digital world. Seems like a faux indie DIY affectation. The song ticks all the earnest confessional singer-songwriter boxes — the muted piano intro, the singer being wronged and not just by some dude but by the town itself.

It’s catchy enough. I started hearing the title phrase in my head after listening to it twice. But also mechanical, starting with the “sitting in my favorite cafe” lyric that cynically targets Starbucks airplay or hopes to be added to Spotify’s “Coffee House Morning Mix.”

There’s also something about the way the singer enunciates the word cafe that’s awkward, as if the word was foreign or new to her. I’m not convinced that she’s having these thoughts while hanging out in her favorite place.

[Once he filed his review, we told him what was up.]

It’s a clever name, actually. Makes you feel like you’re playing along with a harmless joke, and at least Anna Indiana’s creators are being upfront about their digital trickery.

It’s not so cute, however, for indie songwriters who are actual human beings and already stressed about assorted Sisyphean obstacles they face trying to sustain careers in the streaming era who now have to worry about the robots coming to replace them.

The song is banal; the video is super creepy. (Though maybe not as ghastly as the recent Peter Jackson Beatles video for “Now and Then,” which had young John and George playing along with old Paul and Ringo.) But in a word: Eww.

At least when it’s only an audible experience, you can imagine that a flesh-and-blood person is singing the paint-by-numbers sad song. The soulless glare of the AI bot as she pours out her true feelings is skin-crawling but also makes the stop-motion animation of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (or the Eagles’ Christmas Special) look lifelike in comparison.

Couldn’t they have done better? The AI future: inhuman and lame!