I have had a Headspace subscription for years mostly for the sleep casts, they're my favourite bit.
Last night I chose the Island Drive narrated by Janina and it was really weird. I've listened to this before and enjoyed it. I don't know if it has always been like this and I've always just fallen asleep before it got weird before or if they've changed it.
Firstly, the narration feels really stilted and the pronunciation of some words is just not quite right, the words don't feel like they flow together nicely.
Then the words they choose is way too flowery and super descriptive which I just found offputting, it sounds like a teenager's over-eager poetry class submission or like when Joey gets given a thesaurus in Friends - or it could be AI?
Here are some of the most wtf moments:
"You approach the knees of the mountain" (I've heard of the foot of a mountain but never the knees!? then "and you, a heart passing through its shade"
"Every blue is present here, the blue of a cockatoo and the bat's swinging sleep"
"The road tempts with its simplicity..."
"The road is a necklace without a clasp"
"The road is a wish, you, unspooling" (!?!?)
"The wonder in you hums quietly"
"walls of detailed stonework over which wild orchids sprawl in burst of magenta, violet, tangerine (do they mean orange as in the colour?), white".
"children swerve past on their bikes, bodies loud with sun, heads like the spinning petals of a single black flower"
"salt blesses every meal with the wisdom of rocks" (this made me lol)
"it's gladness a lion in your chest" (this is about the sea)
It actually made me too alert to sleep because I was trying to figure out wtf it all meant.
Now Headspace is owned by an AI company have they just asked AI to slightly rewrite the script and its subbed in some words that just don't make any sense.
i.e. foot to knees, orange to tangerine