“….Fire in the mirror, sky turns black
Voices whisper, no way back
Shadows dancing, freedom calls
We rise again, as the silence falls…..”

© The Velvet Sundown, “As The Silence Falls”, 2025

Well…. a month is a long time in songwriting, so it would seem. No updates for a couple of years and then suddenly two come along together less than a month apart. Almost like London buses, as they used to say.

There have been things going on and there is a reason for this update which may provoke some conversation or exchanges of views, it may not.

Firstly, the more important one is that Monochrome is at the mastering stage which I am hoping to complete this week so that I can get it out there into the world before I have to shut everything down and complete my packing to move house in early August. Its not exactly clear when the new studio will be set up, but I seriously doubt that it will be this side of October 2025 if I tell the truth. So, getting Monochrome out of the door is an important step and its almost there.

The second thing that has happened in the last few days which has put a shot of adrenaline into my metaphorical musical arm is the arrival of AI. Now, as the lyrics above relate to, there has been a lot of noise around this particular band that went from nowhere to Spotify playlists and over a million plays in next to no time where they absolutely rose without trace and a lot of the usual music business YouTube community has been chuntering about it quite extensively.

Is it a cynical creation from nothing by a record label in order to generate more income but leaving no visible trace that has any royalty responsibilities going forward with all the rights being held by the label and is this a sign of, unless it is stopped, the way that the music industry is going to go?

Arguably yes and almost certainly yes, to answer both questions.

Anyway. Digression over… I was unwittingly steered in the direction of one of the AI Music creation sites by one of these commentators and decided to take a look at it. The AI Music creation site I decided to take a look at was Suno.

… and by the way, this post is in no way paid or sponsored by them, LOLZ.

As you well know if you’ve followed me thus far (and if you havent, where the hell have you been?), I am primarily a lyricist, and I have, surprise surprise, lots of lyrics around here on this here site, a lot of them from a purple patch around 10-12 years ago when it all just seemed to pour out while I was living in Wiltshire and a lot of those have gone nowhere. I havent done anything with them and while there were some very very loose – and I mean seriously loose – preconceptions about the forms that some of them would take, a number of them were more like free-form poems than lyrics. Some of them I was quite happy with in terms of their phrasing and their structure and what they said but had no attendant musical structure or ideas to go with them and others, because they didnt quite come out fully formed were just added to the site and then left to grow the proverbial moss all over them.

So, it seemed like a tool like Suno might be able to offer a writer like me some sort of perspective on these lyrics, if I were to enter them into the AI toolset and choose some either quite loose or quite strict musical criteria as to what the end product should sound like. There were a whole pile of different musical styles to choose from, some quite genre specific, some quite woolly, some quite ethereal and others that I’d never heard of and were just plain damned confusing, LOLZ.

As there was a free option, I chose that to see what it could do with some of the trickier customers that I’d had which maybe one or two collaborators might have picked up on but havent really progressed… and others that had just been buried and forgotten about. What could be the worst that could happen?

First one into the fiery pit was Come Home Soon. Loosely inspired by a Marillion theme of being far away and its quicker to come home by finishing the entire journey rather than abandoning it, but with an original Nora Jones meter, this one hadnt gone anywhere really. Dave Barnes had had a go at it but I havent heard it for years. So, this was the proverbial sacrificial lamb to the AI Beast.

And the result that came out were thus….

https://suno.com/s/ligMXj2rlmopTEnM

Very pleasantly surprised and bordering on the shocked that it look less than 20 seconds to offer me not one but two interpretations. Based on the following criteria: unplugged, natural, honest, poignant, longing, soaring, authentic.

Granted its not 24/96, its not dripping in the blood, sweat and tears of my honest musical labours (chance’d be a fine thing), but in many respects; this is no different to me giving some lyrics to a topline writer or a “real” musician (not that I’d know what any of those look like these days, LOLZ) and for them to go “aaaahhh, yes, I’ve got just the thing for that!” – like a proverbial Elton John who just sits behind a page of Taupin lyrics and it just pours out…. and like Mick Hucknall said that Laurent Dozier was like when writing songs for the A New Flame album – the melodies and toplines just kept pouring out and pouring out and he was like a kid trying to put his finger in the dam to try and keep the flow under control and to be able to use it and channel all this musical energy.

I readily agree that to a lot of real musicians, this may be seen as the spawn of Satan that we must crush and do so decisively and do it now before it all becomes self aware and destroys us all, but I repeat…. how really is it different to giving lyrics to a topline writer or composer, especially these days by email? I dont think it is that different. Especially when you consider now the established tools that some of us have been using for years like EZ Drummer and EZ Keys and the use of midi files and midi loops to compose. Like having a session player next to you, their advertising strapline used to read. And a lot of those tools have enabled me, a non-playing – well more like a “not really playing” musician to be able to produce coming up on 4 albums worth of work.

Bloody hell, I thought. If I get to be even more specific or granular with what I ask it to do, what is this thing capable of?

So what did I do? Did I frantically try and weld the lid back on the can of worms in the corner that says “Danger-Worms! Do Not Open!”?

Did I hell. I added a couple more of the more challenging sets of lyrics that I liked but hadnt done anything with. I dove in and drank the lake dry, LOLZ. Dont Talk About It followed:

https://suno.com/s/SKJJUxtfEPldka4r

Not quite as funky as I had first imagined it, as it had a kind of James Grant feel to it when I first wrote those lyrics. From the criteria of: warm reverb, expressive percussion, raw male vocals, polished, acoustic drums, eighties, commercial, 120BPM, this is what it brought me and I have to say, I thought ok, thats workable, thats viable, maybe I can build something from that…. whats next?

Well, that was the proverbial floodgate opening. OK, lets give it some really tricky ones, like Once Was Promising.

I mean, this thing was inspired by Midnight Rider by The Allman Brothers ferchrissakes. And while it doesnt sit in the same postcode, its not a million miles away and to my mind, it proves the lyrics were strong enough in the first place. Now I thought, we’re starting to find some genuinely viable tracks that could either be pushed out in their own right, or that I could re-record properly based on what Suno had composed.

And each of these had taken less than 20 seconds to be generated.

https://suno.com/s/0ayOEfJ1WClsvMoM

and it goes on and on. Touch, Another Day, Never Be Mine, Unspoken Words, Deep Deep Blue, All That You Wanted, The Wishing Game, Burning Bridges, Song For Jane, Strange Girl, Amorphous… Once I had ran out of free goes to weigh up whether it was worth using this toolset, the decision was taken for me to be a subscriber and the decision made itself. All of these sets of lyrics, as honestly and earnestly as they were written, were the proverbial problem children that didnt have the music to turn them into songs.

Now they do.

And there are all manner of styles there that these songs have been performed in by Suno’s toolsets; Green Day, Clannad, The Calling, Michael Buble–like jazz, Country Meets Rickenbacker 12 string, hell theres even a Motown-y one that is like Al Green sings the cynical lyrics of Paul Heaton. (aka Heart On A Shelf)

https://suno.com/s/wU6oNxUPrZtDJf6N

And if you pardon the vernacular, that really f**king works and all these were from first drafts, without a detailed understanding of what the toolset can really do when it is pushed.

At this point I was starting to get quite…. I dont know if I’d go as far as “excited”, but it was really something to think “damn, I knew these were good lyrics that just needed a good producer or another musician/collaborator to bring them to life”.. and Song For Jane… well, that really exceeded expectations. That was, when I first heard it, so beautifully encapsulating what I wanted it to say that it almost brought me to tears. Woah.

So…. the library is there to show what can be done with those lyrics and what Suno has done with them. Rights-wise, as the lyricist I have the copyright share that I would expect to.

I didnt write them to make money, but as with any collaboration, I have no problem in Suno taking a percentage if these tracks make any money. If it chooses to and if it can leverage its catalogue of works to be able to make money that may find its way back to contributors like me that covers the annual subscription fee (unlikely, I know, LOLZ) then so much the better.

Much as I’d loved to have created them with real collaborators, as I’ve had a full time career up to now, I’ve not really had the time to do so and my usual collaborators have all got their own real lives to be getting on with.

I dont need them –  my collaborators or my lyrics that is – to make money, much as I think that they might deserve to, thats not my decision.

As Gordon Sumner once observed at the Brits many many years ago when he was festooned with a lifetime achievement award, “music is its own reward”. At the time I thought that “well, given you live in a country mansion like a Squire, practising tantric sex and disappearing up ones own fundament to count the millions in royalties, yes, it probably is…”

Its something that is very easy to say when you’ve already reached a position of commercial success.

But…. as age often does, it teaches you that actually…. actually, theres something in that statement. It brings its own joy. I dont need to do it for a living. But, I would be happy to, if the opportunity arose, to move it from hobbyist semi-professional to something else.

I am very conscious of the fact that in about 3 weeks time I will be sixty years old. Much as I hope to have a lot of time to be able to devote to creating music, getting contiguous blocks of time to build up songs like these is going to be challenging. And some of these – no, the majority of these – songs are already a decade old and have languished doing nothing. The use of a toolset like Suno has afforded me the chance to bring these songs to life and give them a chance to breathe on their own.

And the AI performers sure as hell sing a damn sight better than I’ve been able to in 25 years, if not longer, LOLZ.

And as a writer, I have to take that opportunity and embrace it. So, while a lot of other musicians or creators may eye AI’s involvement in the future with a great deal of suspicion and justified cynicism, I defy them to say to solo lyricists like me that this song doesnt work, because I would argue passionately that it fluppin’ well does…

https://suno.com/s/dVIsywCyRopa1jgd

Yes, the industry will cynically exploit AI and what it creates for money. That is a given. They have been cynically exploiting performers, real human performers, for decades and always will do, if people insist on signing deals with labels and publishers. It is the apex predator of capitalist industries, using Intellectual Property to make money and denying the creators of those works the ownership of those works as a default. There have been a lot of dark and bad things written about the industry over the years and the vast majority of them are true.

I fully support and understand artists deciding to remain totally independent and actively choosing not to sign to a label these days and remaining in full control of their careers. It is a very different musical age that we’re living in.

Without tooting my own horn too loud, I’m as good a lyricist as anyone on my day. And this set of tools helps me to prove it.

The other part of the update, aside from this huge elephant in the room, is how does this affect Mondegreen? Is the album still going to take the same form when it eventually gets worked on later in the year?

Most likely yes. The work is very advanced on Mondegreen and I’ll need to review it in more detail when the new studio is built to make sure I’m still wholly on board with it. I reserve the right to change my mind, LOLZ.

There is though (and here we come, after a very long, tortuous journey to get there), the possibility of a follow on work, which may – I havent decided yet – include some of these works from Suno that I may re-work or keep as they are but remix (and provide my own instrumentation and production). There are other lyrics and lines in books that I have that havent been included in songs yet, but that are worthy of going somewhere.

Conceptually, the collection of songs that could be formed for these tracks is called Time Demands. I had thought of Abcission or a couple of other names for collections of future tracks, but I quite like Time Demands. That came along when I was trying to write a song for a friend who probably doesnt need music right now – or rather he thinks he doesnt – and while the lyrical ideas came, they didnt really gel into anything. But, time does demand that I pull my finger out and get on with it and thats what I intend to do.

So, the future does indeed look interesting in terms of what I can do with my music. I should imagine that I may well release the Suno versions will at some point under a collective name, but we’ll see. That decision hasnt been taken yet.

The next you’ll hear of me should be by the end of next week at the latest when Monochrome should be released.

Til then, my friends.