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The realities of being a pop star

itscharlibb.substack.com

11–20 of 249 posts

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#11

Fascinating. Also impressive rawness, and it doesn't even seem like she passed it thru Chatgpt. It's insane that my first inclination is to detect those telltale signs in a blog post, and here I found none.

I feel absolutely confident that Charlie XCX would never use generative AI in any form. And this sentence is lovely;

"...let some random person you’ve just met in the bathroom try on the necklace around your neck that is equivalent to the heart of the ocean"

Like you I always look for signs of AI in writing I see online, and it's incredibly disappointing how often it's there. There's no personality, no charm, nothing unique - just the same flawless grammar and overuse of cliche. This piece is filled with the quality of humanity that we once took for granted. This is what we are losing.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#12

Fascinating. Also impressive rawness, and it doesn't even seem like she passed it thru Chatgpt. It's insane that my first inclination is to detect those telltale signs in a blog post, and here I found none.

[flagged]

I found it pretty hollow too, but I probably went into it with the wrong expectations. The title of the article sounds promising, and the writing is decent enough that I believe something interesting could be said, but in the end it felt less introspective and more self-indulgent. I'm sure she could write the essay I was hoping to read, but it turned out to be the essay I should have expected instead.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#13

> "A couple of weeks ago Yung Lean came for dinner at my house .. He is probably one of the wisest people I know." Two sentences I would've not predicted in close proximity to one another! Hah, love it. Guess he's been through a lot over the years.

yung leans interview on nyt popcast is good https://youtu.be/p1FF3r6raSc?si=Yq4kxIuQCUkW8IBr also his doc on Noisey years back was really good https://youtu.be/6wgFliyJ4Bk?si=B1DdlOQZH9NBsve1

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It clearly hasn’t been passed through a PR team or ChatGPT; if it had been you’d expect them to fix the grammatical errors. It’s an honest stream-of-consciousness blog post almost certainly written by Charli XCX herself and herself alone about her thoughts, and it is honest and unapologetic. What word more describes this than “raw”?

Wouldn’t the best PR team be the one who you couldn’t tell touched it?

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist and all…

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#15

Fascinating. Also impressive rawness, and it doesn't even seem like she passed it thru Chatgpt. It's insane that my first inclination is to detect those telltale signs in a blog post, and here I found none.

She may be of the final generation of real creatives who aren't at a disadvantage relative to those who take the path of least resistance and put out slop. The current/next generation of the audience may look at manually created art as a curiosity, the way most of us think about listening to vinyl.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#16

Fascinating. Also impressive rawness, and it doesn't even seem like she passed it thru Chatgpt. It's insane that my first inclination is to detect those telltale signs in a blog post, and here I found none.

I feel absolutely confident that Charlie XCX would never use generative AI in any form. And this sentence is lovely; "...let some random person you’ve just met in the bathroom try on the necklace around your neck that is equivalent to the heart of the ocean" Like you I always look for signs of AI in writing I see online, and it's incredibly disappointing how often it's there. There's no personality, no charm, nothing…

not all of us, just most of us, apparently

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I found it pretty hollow too, but I probably went into it with the wrong expectations. The title of the article sounds promising, and the writing is decent enough that I believe something interesting could be said, but in the end it felt less introspective and more self-indulgent. I'm sure she could write the essay I was hoping to read, but it turned out to be the essay I should have expected instead.

Weirdly enough, I went in thinking it would be a deep-dive into the actual process and job of being a pop star.

Presumably she's not just being carted between parties, gigs, and the recording studio - how does she spend her time? Who manages her schedule? When she's putting out an album, is she the one driving the process? How does she (or her manager, label, PA, etc.) find graphic designers, producers, videographers for the ad campaign, contractors to arrange a tour, and PR firms to arrange talk show interviews and press hype? Where does the money go - does she have a family office, does she have an emergency trust fund, how does she protect against fraud and embezzlement, and is she even thinking about that stuff? How does the job of being a pop star work?

The essay is exactly what I should have expected, and that's fine. Even if someone is writing in an unfiltered way it doesn't mean their stream of consciousness will contain the overly detailed trivia I'm interested in.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#18
Courtney Love wrote a fabulous article explaining the realities of a million-dollar album (2000 - https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/) and it explains so much of whats actually going on that the public doesn't fully comprehend. Its a great read if you've never read it.

The realities are similar to what we are reading in this article. Most of what gets talked about is gross numbers not net. Most of the benefits of the job, are in the journey not the destination - if you're even into that stuff... i.e. having your music impact lives.

I wish sooooo much that people could read these things so when I go to a dinner party or random event, some GenPop person knew that JK Rowling makes billions of dollars but your average published writer loses money publishing a book. Your average NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL athletes are broke 5 years after they are out of the league. Fame, is mostly a curse.

Good on charli xcx for writing this and for writing period.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#19

I couldn't think of anything worse than to be known world wide. You couldn't go out in public without being hounded or swamped by people. The parasocial relationships people form with you can put your life in danger. Even worse is being a politician - particularly at a global leader level. Surely there has been an average Joe who has shithoused their way into being a leader of a significant country. Once you do that,…

What does shithoused mean in this context? All the meanings I know for it don't fit, not even metaphorically...
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