SPEAKER_01 0:34

Welcome to the Better To You Podcast. I'm your host, Donna. Today's guest is Mariel Lovelin from the band Best X. And we talk about the new record coming out called Good Girl, as well as that definition. AI. Being a marketer, being a writer, the world in general, and so much more. So tune in. Hi Mariel, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

I'm doing really good. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

I'm doing good. I had the pleasure of listening to your record, and yes, it is very much a callback vibe of that 90s girl rock, which is great.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Ah, you clocked it. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

I mean, it it it it very much takes you back to that time, and there's nothing wrong with that. Uh I was kind of amused by reading about what your the your thoughts were about the good girl, being a 30-something, I mean, that's a ways from me now, but um being that 30-something and looking around at where your friends are and then who you are, and the fact that you have to come to terms with, and I'm sure you've heard it through your life, when are you getting married? When are you having kids? All that other pressure, and it's like, why can't I just be me and why can't you accept me? I mean, that kind of is what I felt from the write-up I read on you.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah, I think your 30s is such a weird time, especially the further you get into it, because you have, you know, friends and family who are the same, you know, your peers are like at the top of their jobs, like absolutely killing it, and peers who have no idea what they're gonna do with the career, and are like in between like little day jobs. You have uh people who have like three kids and a husband, and people who have never been in a stable relationship, and there are people who are getting married for the first time, and people who are going through their first divorce, and it just really is wild because we have these messages that we are told that you know is the right path that your life is supposed to take, and when you look at it, in reality, it's just all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Pretty much. Um, and that's the thing, it's like you can't when someone says to you, Well, when are you getting married? Why do I need to get married? I I I had this when I was in high school, by this point, my mom had lived with somebody before she married him, and my dad had numerous girlfriends that he lived with, and I just was like, Okay, so if I ever decide to live with someone, these two can't say a thing. That rebellion.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

I'm pretty sure my mom lived with my dad before they got married too, and it was like quite the scandal at that time.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Well, I I I look back because recently I a couple of years ago, and I'm I'm in my 50s, I found out that my dad had emancipated himself before he married my mother, so he could get an apartment. Now, but this ties back to your uh the man like you song. Because when I asked my dad about this, no, no, I I didn't I didn't do that. I didn't I didn't emancipate myself, I didn't have an apartment. Okay. And then I had my mom, she would used to tell me the story of Well, your dad and I were virgins when we got married. Now, this is this is why I'm gonna go back to that song, is because you say, Your truth dies with you. Oh no, not if they have a brother or a sister that will be so willing to share something. So it's just like, yeah, my mom was full of it, and they told me this narrative. They painted this narrative, and yes, they divorced and everything, but they painted this narrative, so both of them look very angelic. And I call BS on both of them.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

I feel like that's so funny because I think about the kind of parent I would be if I have kids, right? And I wonder if I would be angelic. I I'm an auntie, right? I have tons, tons of nieces and nephews, and I feel like I'm not. I'm always saying, I'm always saying something, and my sister's like, what'd you say? Can't say that around kids. And I'm like, what? They're fine, they gotta learn life.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Well, and that's the thing. I I think there's a yes, there's a certain amount of protection because I went through being a single woman to being a stepmom, like overnight, to a four and six-year-old. And it was kind of like, okay, so what do I do? What do I say? How do I act? And because all of a sudden now, and this goes back to the early 90s, Beavis and Butthead, my my sister-in-law, we didn't have cable because we lived out in rural Indiana at the time. She sends me a video cut set of Beavis and Budhead, and I'm like mortified that oh my gosh, my kids can't see this. This is just atrocious. Fast forward about two years, and I've split with the husband and the kids, and I'm amused by it. So your perspective, when you become a parent, it's it's a totally different thing than being an aunt or just being because it's like, mmm, wait a second. So yeah, your your thought process changes just a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

I know. I feel like the aunt's allowed to be wild. When I have kids, I'll probably be like, nobody say anything. No one in the in the world is allowed to curse. Though I can't keep that up, and neither can my mom, so I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

I I saw the so I split with the guy, and I went back and saw the kids. They were now 16 and 18, and somebody cut me off in traffic. And I dropped the I was just like, you motherfucker. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. And then I looked at both of them like, you most likely say worse than I do. So what am I apologizing for?

SPEAKER_00 6:17

I mean, they're gonna be exposed to it. Like, I don't understand with cursing, I'm like, why can't we tell the kids we only say it in the home, not outside the home? People will be offended, but like you could say it in the home, as long as you're not being mean towards someone, as long as you are not saying it with meanness. At a certain age, I feel like they would understand. I was maybe not four and six.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

I was well, I was referring, I was across the street waiting for the public bus to pick me up. I was in seventh grade, I think, and seventh or eighth grade. And there was a elementary school across the street, and there was this kid who had to be maybe first grade dropping the F-bomb like crazy.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

I mean, I remember that when I was young. I remember the kids who were like that. It wasn't me. It was only when I got older that like I just probably because my mother's sailor mouth was just deeply ingrained.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Well, my mother always refused to say the F word until she worked at a juvenile detention center and she came home the first day and dropped it. But the the truth of the matter is if you look at the word fuck, it means fornication under consent of king. Was it really a curse word?

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Sounds like a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, it was not it was not a curse word. We made it a curse word.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

I think anything, I the thing for me is anything can be a curse word if it's said with intent. So I just don't feel any sort of way about it.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

No. I mean, words do have power, but if you look at the the evolution of words, they've changed over time. And something that was good at one point is now deemed something else.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Yeah, I really love the way language changes, to be honest. I'm like such a nerd about that.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

It's a good thing though, because it does show evolution. But you know, we have to get out of the whole thought process of, well, this is wrong. Well, you know, sure, kids shouldn't always see things, and but you also can't protect them now as much as you can.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

I feel like there's so much worse happening in the world that like the people who focus on those things just don't really have a lot going on.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

No, no. And and I mean, if you put blinders on and say, well, they shouldn't be reading this because this is in that book, they're gonna see it eventually. That's not gonna go away. I don't care how much you try to eradicate something.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Yeah, I always think about those like people who grow up in those really like hyper Christian bordering on cult um households, you know, and I am Catholic, and Catholics are probably the kinds that uh pe that those people are like, that's not actually Christian, right? Um but what happens to those children when they're like not allowed to know that gay people exist, not allowed to know anything really about the world or how it works. It's very bizarre. Like, what happens when these kids go out into the world and are no longer controlled?

SPEAKER_01 9:12

It's a two-sided thing. You either have them be very repulsed and want to go back to the the home, or they basically tell their families, screw you, I'm off into the world.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah, it just seems dangerous. I don't know. It's it's scary. For the kid. Yeah, it's scary.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

I mean, that's the thing. It's like you're not protecting anybody by sheltering them so much. I mean, my mom loved to if we she took me to see Endlove back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

I don't know what that is.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

I know. Endless Love was the scandalous Brooke Shields movie back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Oh, that movie.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Okay. No, it wasn't the it wasn't the really scandalous, scandalous when she was little. This was just her and this guy who shouldn't who was kind of stalking her.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

But oh, not the one on the island.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

No, no, that was Blue Lagoon. That was Blue Lagoon.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Oh, okay. I saw that one.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

This was after that. And she takes to see me, she takes me to see it. I am in eighth grade, so 13, 14 years old. She puts her hand over my eyes when they go to have sex and shoves me down in the seat.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

I remember watching Titanic and the hand going over the eyes with the car when they're in the car.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

I mean, it really, yeah, you see a little bit, but you don't see anything. It's implied. But that's the thing. It's like we are we will let you see violence. You can go watch a horror movie. My mom took me to see poltergeists, didn't have a problem with it. But if it came to nudity and sex, no, you can't. And that's that goes back to the puritanical culture that we live in.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Which goes back to I feel like my parents were kind of chill, but like when you're six years old and like Titanic's on, the hand's gonna come over. I don't even know why I was watching Titanic at six years old. There's a lot of this is probably why I'm such an anxious person. Because I'm like, there's danger everywhere, even a boat.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Yeah, um, the youngest was five years old, I think, and I had put flat liners in. I'm not a huge horror buff, but I put flatliners in. I watched, she was watching it with me. And looking back, it's like I understand why she started liking horror after that. But yeah, I that I don't like that. She'll be okay. She'll be okay. I love her.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

I watched so many movies. Yeah, I used to watch horror movies every night before bed and like all the time. Like I a huge horror movie junkie, and I thought that I just had these like chronic uh nightmares, that that was just something, you know, creative people are so afflicted with like such an overactive imagination. I have these chronic nightmares, right? For 20 years or whatever. And then I met my husband who um doesn't like he likes horror, but he doesn't like, you know, all the really bad ones. And I'll just like run it through watching as many as I can. So I stopped falling asleep to horror movies. And a couple weeks ago, we got a subscription to Shudder, which is like the horror movie subscription service, and we started watching them every night before bed, and my nightmares came back, and I was like, Oh my god, I'm not brilliant or creative, I was just watching really scary things every night.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Well, I was talking to a therapist about the fact because I have a friend who listens to murder podcasts all the time, and she's gotten more paranoid and anxious, and I said, Could this be you know related? And she's like, Yeah, it could be. I think it definitely is. Telling my friend, like, maybe you shouldn't be listening to those so much. And that's the thing, we don't think about it. We just, oh, it's enjoyable. But yeah, there may be a correlation there.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

It's funny because I'm like that, it doesn't affect me at all. I know it's not real. And then I'm like waking up, like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

So maybe you need a palette cleanser. Watch your horror, then have a little palette cleanser after. So when you were working on this record, what made you have you always kind of felt you were pigeonholed into the good girl role?

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Um, I don't think more than anyone else, right? I think every girl, unless their parents are like a hyper-specific kind of parent that tries really hard to avoid it, um, is raised with certain messaging, you know, just the thousands of messages that you receive just looking at advertisements every day. Um and I definitely am in a unique oh sorry, you kind of'm still here. Oh, you're still here. Okay, cool. Um so I was also raised with like a twin sister who very much is the kind of person who tries really hard to be like perfect in every aspect of what a woman should be, right? She has an amazing job, she is so good at it, she's so smart. She went to an Ivy League college, she has three children and a husband and owns a home, and um has always throughout my life overachieved, you know what I mean? Um, she was in all of the honors classes, she was in all the varsity sports teams, and I think watching that made me sort of see like what my parents' expectations are for a person, um, and then where I didn't meet them. I was like a little bit more aware of the fact that I wasn't good at sports, I didn't really have a lot of boyfriends like she did, which was a mark on my parents, but like in the scheme of like being a teen girl, you you always want the boys to like you, right? And um I didn't really do that well in school. Um and so there was kind of that pressure there to find my own space that wasn't already occupied by someone, and she worked really hard for it, right? And I was just not willing to kill myself to get really, really good grades or to like go the extra mile when I it's just not I'm not a perfectionist, it's just not who I am. And I think that those messages definitely have sunk in.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Well, I think overall, and I wrote a I wrote a piece recently about this the fact that we are we are taught perfectionism to be perfect, to be the ideal of what somebody wants from a very young age. Yes, we are sold that illusion from the time we can really start to function.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

I think women especially are very much taught to be just through our culture, not like through, like I would never say my parents are both psychologists, right? Like they both work in that field, and so they have a very balanced view, I think, of the world and how it works. Um and understand that like people are people, right? But in the society that we live in, women especially are raised to sort of be this prize that is to be won by a man, to get chosen by a man to be to make his life easier, to structure your life, to revolve around him, to make yourself more palatable for him.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Well, and the pick me culture starts out when we're in school.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Even before, even before you have the boy-girl relationship, it's the pick me in the gym class, pick me to answer the question. And so that starts getting ingrained there, and then put in marketing of, oh look, the fairy tale prince is gonna come save me. I mean, you're you're in your 30s, I take it. And I'm I'm looking on the internet and they're talking about how 10-year-old girls are now so worried about aging and and and they're ruining their skin because they want products. Well, why aren't the parents saying no, honey, you can't do that?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

You know, it's absolutely so upsetting. I am someone that you could probably consider chronically online, right? Like I have to be online all the time to promote my art, and then I just end up staying there because it sucks me in and I'm just swiping. And the younger generation is so unbelievably ageist in a way that I have not seen, at least the people on the internet, probably people in the world who don't spend all the time on the internet, are not getting the same amount of brain-rotting messages that these people are getting, but they're so unbelievably ageist that they truly believe that like when you're 24, your life is older, you're irrelevant. When you're 30, it's unimaginably old. Nobody cares about you. The culture doesn't care about you. You why don't I've even seen it went viral because it's so asinine, but there were people being like, Gen Z wants jobs. We just need millennials to retire because you're taking all the jobs. And it's like, how am I gonna retire? I have I don't I don't even own a home. Like, I have to pay rent every month. Where is that coming from? You can't retire until you're like 67.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Yeah. Like what? It's like I don't think they fully, and I don't want to go after Gen Z. I'm not I and I'm Gen X and they like coming for me. But the fact of the matter is you still have to support yourself. You still have to do what you have to do to get by, and they're not gonna be handed stuff. And and though this goes back to an argument about immigration taking jobs. You know, everybody blamed immigrants. Well, guess what? I just read something this morning that's like, well, AI is gonna take half these jobs, there's not gonna be any entry-level jobs. And and my my answer my retort to that is good, you're gonna fire all these people. Who's gonna buy your products? Who's gonna buy your services?

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Honestly, I literally just got let go um from my day job, where I am uh like a marketing writer, and the the whole editorial team was fired pretty much for AI. And it's like, oh, okay. Like, I don't even know what to say today, other than that's not a move I would do, and it's gonna be not great, but sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

And I mean the thing about it is AI all looks the same. Anytime you see AI marketing, it looks the same.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

It's all the same. The writing sounds all the same. It's all the same. There's no brand identity there. Yeah. Um, and I I think people are sick of it. Like every time I see an AI poster, especially advertising food, like, okay, I think that there are some ways people can use AI um to help their craft, um, to sort of cut down on time, not to like cut out jobs, but to cut down on busy work that is maybe not necessary for someone to do anymore. Um, but I think that like when I see these like posters that are like advertising food and it's like this AI food and it looks all weird and not even appetizing, it looks weird. And it's like, why would you want to promote that to your customers as what they're getting? Like nobody wants that.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

No.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

If it looks like that, I'd be horrified.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

And and I I'm sorry you lost your job. I I'm very sorry. I I am sorry. I'm an author, and I have recently dealt with you know, people that want to say they're authors when they're just prompters. Amazon is being swarmed with AI books. And now we also have AI bots reading, and we also have AI bots reviewing. So what it's just this big loop.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

It's a feedback loop of AI. It's ridiculous. I mean, songwriting is getting that way too, where people are like, I'm a musician, and all they're doing is putting in a prompt. They're like, Yeah, but the prompt is catered to my taste. I decide the taste is gonna go. It's like, you know, do you think that you when you go to a restaurant and you order something on a menu that you're the chef? Is that what you're thinking? Like when you pick toppings on your pizza, are you the one who made the pizza because you picked the toppings? Are you the chef now?

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Is that what we're I I had someone that I I talked to that podcast never went to air, who this was right before the whole AI launch, that she considered herself that she could play all these instruments. So when I sat down with her, everything was done on the keyboard. She would just change the effect. And she considered herself a bass player, she considered herself a guitarist.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

That is very weird. And honestly, have you read like the re I've been reading a lot of reports lately about how AI actually some. Through like neuroplasticity encourages delusions.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

And I think that we are seeing this on a widespread scale that is only gonna get more unbelievably delusional.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Oh, I there was a there's a thing where there's this guy who posted pictures that he was marrying his AI girlfriend.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

I love the AI girlfriend people. I it me and my friend constantly send them back and forth. I'm so sorry if that is offensive to someone, but I just I can't, I I can't. It's so funny. I'm just it's sad. What is that?

SPEAKER_01 22:34

And I'm like, okay, so how are you taking them home to mom and dad to meet them? How are you taking them anywhere to and they was actually he had his phone across from him at a restaurant?

unknown 22:49

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

I'm just like it's like that movie her, and it was such a sci-fi movie. People are like, this is would never happen. This is so unrealistic. And then in like, how many years has it been since that came out? Has it even been 10? It's exactly what's happening. I do find it sad and scary, like, because there are people who are so lonely that they create this AI girlfriend and then fall in love, but then there are like these people who are like creepy where they create this AI love because they don't actually there's something wrong with them where they can't accept a human with human stuff, they want something catered specifically perfectly to like always reinforce them. And that I think is creepy and weird.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

But that is the AI. I mean, that that that has been proven that AI will tell you exactly what you want to hear until it tries to, unless you get like the rogue one who basically talks you into committing suicide.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

Oh my god, that one it was crazy. I don't even understand why there aren't safeguards against that. Like, um I I I just I don't get it. Because I have to be honest, in the very limited number of times that I have used AI just to ask questions, um, it has put up ethical concerns. Like, maybe this will get me canceled, but to type in like a celebrity, like, what did this person do to their face? And they're like, I will not speculate on the and I'm like, okay, why are you suddenly you encourage people to go kill themselves? Why are you suddenly the arbiter of like morality? What happened here?

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Yeah, but I mean it's it's true. There's sometimes you do question it because suddenly somebody looks very different, and you're not, I don't think you're not.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

I know usually I uh I usually never use like AI for anything, but in that instance, my friend was like, You gotta you gotta just ask it stuff, like check it out. So I asked it some like wild stuff to see how far it would go. Um, talking about well, you know, before nasty things.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

I'm not on Google anymore. I moved off of Google because of the AI.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

Oh, good. I hate it.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

But well, I gotta figure out what to do with my email address because it's my website, but it's a Google address technically. So in Google can be able to get a lot of people. Yeah, but you don't have emails. Oh yeah. So um when Dolly Parton died, I decided because the I wanted to see what AI was gonna say. So it was like maybe an hour after they announced it. And Google AI came back and said, She is alive. The the rumors of her demise are false. I'm like, oh, I said this is because we haven't updated the the data set yet.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

So yeah, Google is often wrong because I still use Google and I hate that you can't get rid of the AI on it, because the AI I have found is incorrect at least 50% of the time. At least.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Well, and and that's because you're taking all the data, no matter if it's bupkis or what, and putting it all together, we're gonna give you an answer, even if it's wrong.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Yeah, I I really honestly I hate that feature. It's really annoying. It was better to get better information to not have to like scroll past it. And then it's like, is there more you want to know? And then ask you more questions. And it's I'm like, I don't want to talk to you, leave me alone.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

And I saw the creepy video of the AI interviewer for the job.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

I I mean Oh, and have you seen the hospital ones? The people my favorite is like the people on TikTok who um they have like the doctor's office pre-screening AI like nurse lady who's like, tell me your symptoms, and they have like a toy baby. They're like, My baby is like they're waving the baby around, being like, My baby doesn't have a leg, the leg just fell off. What do I do? And it's just like, I know you might be concerned that your baby is missing a leg, but everything looks fine from here. It's just like unbelievable. It just like doesn't understand. No, it's very easy to trick.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Well, and this is the thing. They're the people that are supporting AI, it's like, oh, we're all in. There was a guy who overheard a conversation at an airport for this guy, two men that knew each other, and he's like, hey, yeah, I just fired X, uh, I think it was like 200 employees. I'm gonna save millions because AI can now do all of this.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Okay, well that's no, that's the thing. My question would be can it actually take the job of 200 people? I'm not sure. No, I don't think it can. I don't think so. But maybe like one or like honestly, I could see I can see how it could be used with like writing jobs like mine if there is an editor who now has a buttload of more work because they're gonna have to fix the stuff that the AI wrote. But I I can see that direction um being terrible for editors and you know these evil corporations being like, well, if it's the bottom line, so like okay, like that I get, but like when you're on the scale of firing 200 people, I don't understand how that is sustainable in any way. Plus, it's expensive, I hear.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Well, that's the thing. It's like these people are betting so hard on this, but what happens when it doesn't give you what you want? And companies have reversed those decisions. There have been some companies that got rid of AI because it didn't pan out. But but even there's three publishing houses out of the big five that are now using AI. Yet they fired two people saying, Hey, no, or they had offered two authors deals. And basically they said, nope, you used AI, we can't have that. But yet they're using AI. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Well, they don't want to pay someone, I guess, to do what they can do.

SPEAKER_01 28:51

And and I had I had uh I had an author who I worked with earlier this year. I shouldn't say author, I should say prompter. But she presented herself that way, and I started reading her book and I reached out to her. I'm like, this, you know, you got some errors here. Oh, well, can you work with me? Oh, okay. And I did. And then I get this email from some random person about the fact that she used AI. And mind you, there were tells. There were tells like I asked her for I need a description of how this man is looking at a woman. She sends me back like three pages. And there's kind of weird writing up at the top. Now I know because I had never used AI at all, that this was a prompt.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Yeah, I used I have used it to like understand what it sound like what it sounds like and what it looks like. Because with music, it can be very tricky if you've never really paid attention to it. But now, I mean, uh for the most part, unless if it's very specific genres where voices are very manipulated, I can pretty much tell right away, like, this is an AI song.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Well, and for like this, what ended up because she had left a prompt in the early review copies. And I didn't even finish reading the early review copy because it was so muddled and bad.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

So this person say, like, you should be reading the work that you make, but at the same time, I'm not really surprised that a prompter who thinks they're an author doesn't read what comes out.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

Well, so I get this email, and I and she's the the person tells me, How do I know that you don't support AI because you're helping her? And I'm like, I didn't know. So I had I wrote this big apology and everything, and I when I'm cutting ties with her, her husband's in the background. Well, you know, you can just change the names of the store characters in the story and the title and and release it under a different pen name. I'm just like, however, that being said, she she basically asked me, she didn't ask me that night, she contacted me the next day wanting the work I had done.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Why does she need an editor? Well, this is she get her AI to edit it and read it? Can't she get a different AI? Well, the thing is I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

The thing is, one minute the character's doing this, the next minute the same character's doing this, suddenly we have a character that was never available anywhere in the book is suddenly there. These are why the things I kept going to my friends, I'm like, something's wrong here. Something is really wrong.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

I am surprised though that like someone who obviously didn't read their manuscript um that they made wouldn't just put it in a different AI to edit it and then not read it again and be like, this is fine.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Well, here's the truth. I was the second, I was the second editor. Somebody had already told her not to do this, that she was using AI and she needed to stop.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

So I was the second person.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Man, it sucks to be duped like that. Because they don't lead with that. Like I wrote this on AI. No, no, and that's why no work with them.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

That's why I just basically, when she said, Can I I can I have the book back or the work you've done? I'm like, nope, I've deleted it. I was not going to put myself being connected to that because you no, absolutely not. She misrepresented herself.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Absolutely not. If I found out that I worked on an AI song, I would be absolutely so embarrassed and embarrassed by the fact I didn't clock it too. Especially with music, I mean it's hard, but it it's not it's less hard with music to clock it than with I think writing, there are things people can do where um it's not as detectable unless you are obviously a professional writer.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

We're like, I can clock it, but well, the problem is now a lot of the people that are on social media are basically saying, well, if he ran his hand through his hair, that has to be, that has to be AI.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

People say I'm the I the M-dash, and I'm like, I you don't understand. AI was trained on my writing. I my my career before I was a touring musician was working at women's magazines, like glossy magazines in the early 2000s. The amount of M-dashes in women's magazines is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Well, you'll appreciate this. Somebody's response finally was because they've just gotten so over it. I think the next book I write is not gonna have any words.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Did you see the did you see that um it was kind of viral on on one of the things like threads or uh Twitter? I don't really use Twitter, but I have a friend who sends me some select things from it. Um, but I don't want to give Elon Musk any money. Um and it was people were cutting out the descriptions in books because they only wanted the dialogue because they wanted they didn't want someone telling them what to think about the world they were reading about, which is like, can you just admit that you don't like reading?

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Well, wait. Like the the last week it was I don't want you to tell me how something smells. I don't want to hear, I don't want you to say that they heard it and it sounded like this. So it's the description, but it's a different play on how because yes, I saw that one. I just want the dialogue. No, this was I don't want if he he describes a smell, I don't want him to describe a smell.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

I'm honestly these things make me because I don't even know what to say because it is such like anti-intellectualism in any way. It is like just there's nothing else to call it beyond stupidity.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

I don't know. Here's the bigger question Are we doing this for clicks? Because it rolls back to that pick me crap that we were talking about because oh, you like me, you're gonna share it, you're gonna click it, okay, then I'm gonna get more followers, and people really like me.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

But I do think some people double down so much. I'm like, they really just must think this on some level. And I to be fair though, right? Like when we talk about these things like Gen Z being a certain way or whatever, I do not encounter these people in real life. So I don't know where they're hiding. Maybe they're just like people who don't leave their house because like everyone I know from a younger generation, all the friends and the people that I work with are completely normal. I was gonna say, they're taking a hammer chair, and like they're gonna take a hammer to their face to fix their face.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

What? Oh, looks maxing.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

You come on. Oh my god. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah. I mean, maybe a little Botox, but like I don't feel like that's acceptable. Um, but I don't encounter these people in real life, and I don't know. Like, are they real? You know, you have that dead internet theory where 50% of the internet is just bots. Well, but then you see faces of people on TikTok and you're like, how is this person real?

SPEAKER_01 36:20

But but here's the thing there's two things here. Number one, when the data centers blew up in Russia, apparently bot traffic dropped a lot.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

I didn't notice because they're still all over my posts. And you're calling me names.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Then obviously. Maybe those are real people. Maybe. And then you have you have the AI generated videos of people that are stealing things. So what you're seeing of a face is just AI creating something, possibly.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

I would like to think that I would be able to tell if a person was AI, but honestly, with like filters and stuff on TikTok, if someone used a filter, no way. There's not a chance. Um, but I don't know. There's a lot of weird stuff I see on that app, and I'm like, uh are people really like this?

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Well, you know, this goes back a few years, and I used to work in insurance a long time ago. The the trend of let me jump out of my car and dance.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

And I'm like while it's moving?

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Yes, yes, yes, this was years ago, and I I was I as well.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Well, obviously, in insurance, uh, someone who works in insurance would hear about that because people are probably injuring themselves left and right.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

I wasn't I wasn't working in the industry at that time, but I'm thinking, you guys are such idiots because if I were an adjuster, I'd start looking for you online. And if I found this, it's an intentional act. So guess what? Your claims denied. I'm sorry you wrecked your car.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point. I've never thought about that, but then again, I've never jumped out of a moving car to dance.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

That's the thing, nobody thinks about the intentional act. Things aren't always covered, but we got off into a really weird tangent. But anyway, um, so are you going to be touring any with the record?

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Right now, I wanted to keep things like really 1990s. So I was thinking of trying to do a bunch of like record uh in-store record performances back like the ones I used to go to when I was much younger. Um, and I loved that element of this kind of more intimate, like smaller performance at the shop where you get the record on the day, and it's just like all about the physical media. And uh, it turns out not a lot of record shops do that still. Um, but I did find two who are doing that. So I have that planned for November, and then I'm gonna figure out what else. If someone wants to take me on tour, I'm available, but it's gotten really expensive, as is everything.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

But well, I've talked to several musicians who have done the couch, you know, the home tours where people have yeah, I did um a small uh the last tour I did with my old band Candy Hearts was like a small um like unconventional spaces tour of like people's homes, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

Um any space that uh you know, like a fan would want to host us at that was like a small intimate space. And it was really cool.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

What advice would you give anybody that was thinking about becoming a musician in this day and age?

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Try really hard not to be chronically online while being chronically online. I think it's just it's amazing now with the way that the algorithms work, in that, you know, I used to go off and play, you know, to thousands of people at each show. I would hope I would get a tour that I could open that would expose me to that many people, and you can be exposed to that many people right in your living room. Um, so it's really cool, and you have like a huge opportunity there, except because everybody can just be exposed to nine gazillion things on their phone. Um it's also harder to grab attention. So I think it's really important to not focus on the numbers of stuff and to really focus on who you are as a person and as an artist and the art that you want to create.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

I have two more questions about your record. Uh I want to go back to who inspired Man Like You?

SPEAKER_00 40:36

I am never gonna say that.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

But it was it was based on something real. Yes. Okay. All right, but I mean, like I said earlier, you know, that you may think that their secrets will die, but going through my dad, my dad will be 69 next month, and uh not 69, 79. Going through his life, uh having his girlfriends tell me off to the side, well, your dad said this. My favorite one as of late was your your mother moved you to Shreveport when you were just a little kid. She stole you. And I looked at the girl, wait, I looked at the girlfriend and I see this makes me rageful. Well, I looked at the girlfriend and said, No, I was 15, almost 16 years old when we moved.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

I think I think that song in particular, like it's a common, it's a common feeling that a lot of women have where you know the person that has harmed them is such a different person to the public. And you know, um, that there's no way that anyone would believe them. And I do want to say that I I do believe the things that people say because it it's such a universal, like it happens to all of us, and yet there's still the nobody believes you. And when you look at it underneath it all, it's all so common, it's just so common. Like that, like what you're saying about your dad making up this story about him being the hero and the evil ex-wife. It's such a tired trope.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Well, the one the another great one was his second wife. He she tells me, she goes, Well, you know, your dad was actually in love with somebody that was your age. Ew. I hadn't I was in my 30s at that point.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Okay, that's not so bad.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

We were my dad Well, how old was your dad? My dad's 20 years older than me.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

So okay, but 30s at least I know, I know. Is it is is gro grown and like the the brain is fully formed at least.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

But I but that was prior to him being with his second wife. So she was in her twenties, I'm assuming.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

But he never meant here's the thing, he never mentioned her to me.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

This was since he probably knows what you would say.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

Well, the thing is, my dad, my dad is the guy you described because my dad basically paints this picture of who he is, yet I know all these truths from everybody else. It's just like so it's exactly what you said. It's I put out this image, I'm the firefighter, I had all these friends. Okay, but I know who you really are.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

Yeah, I mean, we all have somebody like that in our lives. I think pretty much everyone, and that's why I really wanted to write that song, and I do think it is quite a vulnerable song, and I don't necessarily love being that vulnerable about stuff all the time. Like, it's really easy to write like a silly breakup song about like an ex. Like, okay, like stuff like that, everyone goes through it, everyone is like, Oh, my ex was so mean, that doesn't necessarily feel As vulnerable as songs where you're like taken advantage of.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

But the the thing about it is being vulnerable, you'll find those people that connect with you on a different level that are not just looking for the superficial.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Yeah, so I have made a commitment to be that way always through art. Um, but this record, especially, I just feel like there are some really vulnerable songs. I think Sick of Myself is probably the one where I'm like, oh god, that one really makes me feel uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

But here's the thing, it this ties into the AI thing. It may make you feel vulnerable, but it makes you authentic. And that's something that AI will never do. So being authentic and being you and in, and that's the same thing with any kind of writing. It's like if you're willing to put bleed on the page, if you're willing to bleed into the music, it's gonna come through, it's gonna translate. Yeah, because it's not super, it's not superficial.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

Yeah, I totally agree.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

So, what are your plans besides a couple of dates and in doing promotion for this? Are you planning on making more music?

SPEAKER_00 45:16

Um, I am planning on making more music videos first before I make more music. Uh, but I have been working, you know, on a side project just for fun. Um while I still feel like it's not time for Best X to make new music. I'm sure like, you know, like a couple months after the album's out, I'll be like, okay, I need to maybe think about writing something again. But right now I feel like this this chapter is like, like you, you probably know, like you're a writer. When you when you've written the novel and you're like, that's all I have in me. That's it, it's closed. Now I have to figure out, you know, something uh reinvent myself in some way. I have to experience more of life, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

Um, I wrote three novels this year. One is a novella, and I find myself because I thought at the time when I finished it that it was rushed. And so I went back to finish that. But I I planned on writing the other two books. There's one more book where these this couple's in their 50s. And I have had a hard time writing it, and I know why, because then I have to let them go.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

That I feel like is part of why this album also took me quite some time to write. Because once you finish it, then you have to put it out, and then you have to do it all again, and it's really hard to start again, and it's really scary. And we live in this culture where everything is so instant, and everyone expects like a new song every like four to six weeks or whatever, and that's just never been the kind of artist that I am. Um, you know, I release albums and I write albums, and that kind of idea of living in this place where it's just like a constant cycle is really scary to me.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

The best way to describe that is how I used to say about my insurance job. It's a hamster wheel. You get on the hamster wheel and you're going and going, it never stops.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

I like to think really intentionally about the works that I'm doing, especially the older I get. Like very much when I was younger, it was throwing a bunch of things at a wall and being like, which one is gonna be the thing that gets people to know my band, right? And then once that happened, now I feel very intentional about stuff and I can't just be on a hamster wheel. I have to be making an intentional work for a reason.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

Yeah. And and the thing is, if you if you just put something out to put something out, it's gonna lack. It's gonna be right up there with AI. I hate to say it that way, but because it's it's there's no connection, there's no depth. And so you have to put your best self. And this is where, you know, you said I'm not a perfectionist, but I think as a musician, that's where the pus and the creative, that's where the perfectionism hits.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

I guess knowing when to shut up is really in a way, because yeah, you're right. I could, I could follow what they say, I could release a song every month of just some song. You know, I do have with the side project that I do, we do just write as many songs as possible and hope like some ad will buy them or whatever, but it's not the same kind of art for us as our individual um. I mean, some of the songs are, yes. Like, don't get me wrong, like sometimes there'll be one where I'm like, that's a banger. I would put it out with best sex, but for the most part, it's about the songs aren't like about our souls, you know what I mean? It's not like we have to like live our lives to be able to write about things. And I think just that piece of knowing when to edit yourself is just a very important part of our artistry that has been lost to AI and has been lost to the algorithm.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

Well, and the thing is, whether it's a song, a book, or whatever, it's your baby. It is your creation. You've put your heart, you put your soul in it. And yes, you can you can throw it up there and and get it out. But are you gonna be satisfied? Or are you gonna be pulling it back down, going, you know, I needed to fix this?

SPEAKER_00 49:33

That is actually where I do well. I feel like I'm pretty good about being like, eh, I'll just try again instead of like let me fix this. It's always a constant cycle of like, okay, that is what it is. That was the best I could do at the time. Maybe I should have done this differently, but um let me just try again. I'll just make something else that's that maybe better.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

And it's not always, but so is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would like to add?

SPEAKER_00 50:05

Oh Lord, I don't think so. I feel like we covered like I feel like this is a therapy session of me like yelling at a cloud about like the modern world.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

Well, I thank you for coming on.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

I know we focused a lot on the song Man Like You. And that's because when I was listening to the lyrics, when it when the lyrics actually say, um, I guess your secrets will die with you, basically. And when I was listening to it, it really made me think about my father. And yes, we've talked about him several times on the podcast. But my dad has this illusion, and I know that some men do that, even you know, even when they don't mean to, we all have a narrative. Men, women, whatever. We all have that narrative. But a lot of guys will paint a narrative for them to be the victim. Well, I went through this to to get here, and this happened, and you know, like I said on the podcast, well, her mother took her when she was just a little kid. She stole her from me. No. And that's the thing. As long as that that story stays centered. I mean, if my mom were still alive, you know damn well I would have turned around and asked her. So, you know, this whole thought about you and dad waiting. Did dad have an apartment? Did dad emancipate himself? All those questions would have been right there. Because, you know, me having the mouth I do, I would have not mixed words. I would have asked her because I'm curious. I wanted to know. And, you know, kind of going back to that illusion when I look at my dad, you know, when I'm nine, ten years old, going, Well, why did you guys break up? And my mother giving me these this laundry list of your dad was cheating, your dad did this, your dad did that, that, that, that, that, that. And one day you're gonna find out who your dad really is. She wanted me to hate him so badly, so badly. But when I would ask him, his answer was always, I'll tell you when you get older. So, me being the kid that I was, of course, blame myself when I had nothing to do with it, but I did at the time and for a long time after. Maybe I did something wrong, maybe I wasn't good enough. And that's that's a child's insecurity. That's, you know, did I do something that shouldn't have that I shouldn't have? I mean, intuitively I knew that their marriage was in trouble because I said, hey, I'm not going, you know, you guys go to Disney World. You guys need some alone time. What nine-year-old says that. But anyway. Um, the fact of the matter is, when I look at, you know, time passes, and I when I hit 40, I just finally look at him and say, So wanna tell me why you guys split? And of course, he gave me a narrative. He gave me his narrative that my mother was the cheater and my mother did this. And I remember it being like the movie The Butterfly Effect. Everything, all of a sudden, all my thought process had changed. Everything I thought I knew, suddenly I didn't. And I sat with that for a couple of months, and then finally it was kind of like wait a second. There's two sides to both stories. And they each have their own version. What if the truth is somewhere in the middle? What if, let's be honest, both of them cheated? I'm not gonna fault them for that. They're human. But neither one could be honest and had to blame somebody else, which goes back to my lesson from insurance that first day of no one wants to take responsibility for their actions. How can my mom admit to herself that she did this? And how can my dad admit that he did this? Because either way, they're going to look like the bad guy in their young daughter's world. Well, even though I am as old as I am, I think my dad still sees me as this kid. But and that's fine, that happens. But I'm not, and I have made my own decisions about it. So I think the statement of, yeah, sure, if you don't have all those relatives, like I said, his own his brother and his half-sister outed him about things. They their stories align. My dad's story not so much, and my dad's story about other things. You know, I I listen to him and I take what he says with a grain of salt because I understand after going through X number of girlfriends, after going through so many people around his circle, I see more of the man who he truly is than the man he presents. And that's true for any of us. We all have a side that we show the world. In college, I used to, I wrote a piece about how each of us had a role to play. And I think that's true. We each put ourselves on a role to play in our lives, whether it be family, friends, or whatever, we take on a role. And there was a long time in my life where I did take on that role of good girl. Uh, goody two shoes back in when I was in high school was basically my theme song because I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, you know, and it was one of those things, and and I wasn't messing around. So therefore, I was the good girl. And I look back and go, why did I need to play that role? I had to play that role because that's what my mother drilled into me, that I had to be the good girl. And if I would have done any of that, then and it got caught, I would have been atrocious. I would have been just awful. And I know that for a fact because when I when I actually did have somebody at my house, I had my girlfriend, my best friend at the time over at the house, and then two boys that we knew, two guys, we were 19 years old. And my mom still sat there and was she ended up finding out that I had these people here, and she was more mortified that I had a long nightshirt on and no bra than anything else. So she grounded me. How insane is that? Because oh my gosh, I had no bra on. Okay, and I had guys in the house, but like I said, I'm 19 years old. There was at the time that was legal. But anyway, I digress and I think that you should definitely check out the record. It is very much hearkening back to the 90s, it's got that 90s vibe. And I think you would enjoy it. I really do. And Marielle was delightful to talk to, so I thank her for coming on. I thank Fast Susie for the intro and outro music, and most importantly, I thank you guys for tuning in. So whenever you're listening, morning, morning, noon, or night, I greatly appreciate it. And I'll catch you next time, guys. Bye.