Château and Suno

[Verse 1] Yesterday, AI music generator Suno announced a new four hundred million round at a five point four billion valuation and I just stood there, feeling small The latest sign that investors believe AI-generated music is here to stay Ironically, just a few days earlier I was far away [Verse 2] I was sitting in a fourteenth-century French château in the Loire Valley with a dozen other songwriters geeking out over lyrics, melodies, and rhyme schemes at a bucket-list retreat On one side, a startup built on the idea that anyone can create a song in seconds On the other, people traveling across the ocean to spend a week doing it the slow way [Pre-Chorus] And after spending the week far away from Silicon Valley both physically and metaphorically I’m not convinced either vision settles the bigger questions for me [Chorus] I keep asking, baby, where does it go? Slow way, fast way, same old road (Where does it go?) Will music live in the in-between? Suno dream and a human dream [Verse 3] Whether or not Suno succeeds I suspect music will continue to exist on a spectrum of technology use which has existed since recorded music began With the invention of the phonograph and even in my cohort at the château there were songwriters who routinely relied on online beats, digital recording software, pitch correction Social media distribution, and countless other technologies musicians have always adopted new tools when they found them useful I’ve seen that truth in every room [Pre-Chorus] As The Verge reported a few months ago even some Nashville songwriters are already experimenting with AI tools to generate demos and explore ideas more quickly I suspect we’ll see more of that but I still lie awake and wonder what kind of song gets sold when everybody’s got a voice [Chorus] I keep asking, baby, where does it go? Slow way, fast way, same old road (Where does it go?) Will music live in the in-between? Suno dream and a human dream [Bridge] But will making music become a mass-market form of entertainment in its own right? How about I prompt Suno to write a song about that I can hear the question hanging like rain on a windowpane If the machine can make the frame who’s gonna carry the name? [Final Chorus] I keep asking, baby, where does it go? Slow way, fast way, same old road (Where does it go?) Will music live in the in-between? Suno dream and a human dream I keep asking, baby, where does it go? Fourteen-century stone and code (Where does it go?) Will music live in the in-between? Suno dream and a human dream