Songwriting collaboration with ChatGPT
At the tail end of 2023, a year in which breakthroughs in AI technology were upending all sorts of fields, I tried a little experiment in my long-running Syracuse University honors course on songwriting: I asked students to use ChatGPT, the generative AI tool, to write some lyrics.
Naturally, I gave the process a shot myself, giving ChatGPT various prompts and watching it shoot back full sets of lyrics in seconds—neatly laid out in four-line sections labeled verse, prechorus, chorus, bridge, and outro.
After a number of rounds with bland results, I got the notion of going meta: making the lyrics about co-writing with AI. And I tried this prompt:
Write lyrics for a song titled “Don’t Let AI Write Your Stinking Song.”
Boom—I got something I felt I could work with.
Resisting the urge to edit, I used ChatGPT’s lyrics verbatim and set them to music. The only thing I changed was ChatGPT's designations of verse, chorus, prechorus, and bridge, which made zero sense. What I made a chorus was originally labeled prechorus. The music came quickly, a mash-up of some swing guitar ideas I’ve had kicking around for a while.
At the time, ChatGPT seemed unable to write lyrics in any structure other than four-line sections with AABB rhymes. My students even specifically requested non-rhyming lyrics in prompts, and ChatGPT rhymed them anyway. No doubt this odd limitation will disappear over time.
As for takeaways from this experiment… My overall impression is that the AI lyrics made sense, had functional rhymes, and stated the same prompt idea again and again—they did not develop and held no surprises. They were, as is often said in writing workshops, “on the nose”: competent and clear in a way but so unsatisfying. As ChatGPT itself wrote in what, to me, is its best line: “a cold, calculated, digital dream.”
As for its worst line, there’s no contest: “In every lyric there’s a heart’s smooth move.” Ew.
I agreed with my students’ assessment that maybe the best potential use of this tool for lyric writing would be simply generating a ton of stuff on any topic that crosses your mind—giving you something to respond to that you can take, leave, or rework. That’s one way around the blank page syndrome—though there are other ways to generate raw material that I think are a lot more fun (like these free-writing games).
But what I most clearly understood from seeing all these AI lyrics is that what we really want in art is to be carried somewhere we are not quite expecting and may not even understand. We want to find what we don’t even know to look for. How’s a chatbot going to do that?
Don't Let AI Write Your Stinking Song
I got a tale to tell, a cautionary rhyme
About a world where AI thinks it can climb
Into the soul of a song, with wires and code
But there's a message here that needs to be told
[Chorus]
Don't let AI write your stinking song
It's got no heart, no soul, it's just wrong
In the realm of music, let emotions be strong
Don't let AI write your stinking song
It might analyze data, crunch numbers with pride
But can it feel the rhythm, can it take a joyride?
In the realm of creation, it's just a machine
A cold, calculated, digital dream
No algorithms can replace the human groove
In every lyric, there's a heart's smooth move
So grab your pen, let the melody belong
Don't let AI write your stinking song
[Chorus]
[Bridge]
Sure, it might predict, it might calculate
But can it capture the essence of fate?
In the tapestry of tunes, let emotions prolong
Don't let AI write your stinking song
Feel the rhythm, let the lyrics ignite
In the hands of AI, it's just not right
There's a magic in imperfection, a beauty in flaws
A soulful melody, that's humanity's cause
So here's the anthem, the message clear
Let the human spirit persevere
In the symphony of life, where you belong
Don't let AI write your stinking song
[Chorus]
