SONG: “Hashtag Exclamation (#!%^)”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “‘Just give me the f***ing links!’—Cursing disables Google’s AI overviews,” Ars Technica, 25 January 2025, as used in the post Get better searches by swearing at Google.
ABSTRACT: This is a song about swearing without any swearing in it. That was sort of my challenge to myself. I figured, if it’s good enough for Hagar the Horrible and Popeye the Sailor Man, it’s good enough for this lyricist. Of course, it kind of helps that obscured swearing in the time-honored comics tradition also looks like rudimentary code. Profanity as the non-breaking space.
There’s something interesting from a computer-science perspective about this story, too, in that it’s about secret override switches based on totally unrelated human concerns. Censorship as a backdoor. Fastidiousness as a kill-switch.
So who knows what human concerns could create unintended failures in AI systems as they develop.
Recording-wise, this one was complicated by a wedding, a very happy wedding, taking place the day before I was to have the song finished. And there was a rehearsal the day before that. I brought a ukulele with me and worked on finding something that was insistent, repetitive, but not, like “metal” or grindy.
The lyric followed that. I knew it’d be a direct address to the machine in the form of a complaint, and as soon as I realized I’d be using a swear-word as symbolic code, I knew what the chorus would be. Writing the whole lyric took maybe a day, with some tweaking during initial recording. I’ve thought about computers and the internet as an outboard brain for decades. How are we supposed to remember anything without being able to double-check instantaneously? Why on Earth would we want that slowed down and made less accurate and clear?
The original drum loop and some of the other sounds (though not any of the melodic/rhythmic phrases) came from another song I started with a friend. I have an idea of trying to do an entire album, or at least an EP or something, with one drum loop running through the whole thing. So I guess this could be an extension of that, technically, if it ever happens.
This is one electronic drum loop, one loop of fingerdrums (beating out a clave on the front of the laptop keyboard), two tracks of ukulele (one distorted into a lead part), four vocal tracks (with one run through an effect called “paranoia mangler” and another scooched up an octave – together, those two are “the voice of idiot AI”), an organ and a fake Rhodes playing a bass part. My original intention with the very simple, cliched pop chorus progression was to use a bass line to make it sound like a different set of chords, and I’m pleased at how well that worked. There was a lot of EQing. I did not use my usual mic, but instead used a headphone mic for part of it and the onboard laptop mic for most of it, just for convenience of recording and also to get a staticky sound. I mean, it’s about the electronics not working right, so it has to sound like that, right?
I like the hooks here.
LYRICS:
Hey outboard brain, I apologize to you
For the things I say and the way I speak, too
All I want is the information
All I want is an answer and not this
Doo do-do doot do, doo do-do doot do, doo do-do doot doo… (x2)Hey outboard brain, with your attitude
You should have seen this coming through
All I want is what I ask clearly for
All I want is an answer, so I gotta say…
(CH)
hashtag exclamation percent-sign up-arrow
Insert query here
Redact these unclear fabrications of your maddening AIhashtag exclamation percent-sign up-arrow
To make my answer clear
You made me use four-letter language, blank off and die.
But first, my answers…Search engine, you used to be a fine machine
I learned your prompts and you educated me
Streamlined responses, correct and clean
Streamlined responses and not this
Doo do-do doot do, doo do-do doot do, doo do-do doot doo… (x2)Search engine, who taught you to deceive?
Who gave you hallucinations?
Who gave you this personality?
Streamlined responses only happen if I…
(CH)
hashtag exclamation percent-sign up-arrow
Insert query here
Redact these unclear fabrications of your maddening AIhashtag exclamation percent-sign up-arrow
To make my answer clear
You made me use four-letter language, blank off and die.
But first, my answers… (x3)
Give me my answers… (x3)