Jack of No Trades, Master of Less Than None

where sung "writes" a "song"

I’m quite lazy, though I doubt anyone who knows me would say this about me. Instead, if asked, I imagine their response would be something like:

“Sung? Goodness, no, lazy? No way! He’s held a job at a megacorp for almost thirty years, doing backend internet stuff, and he’s published five novels while working full time. You know he never even majored in computer science? He learned how to code on the job. No, Sung is the antithesis of sloth.”

Well, okay, maybe I’m not lazy in what pertains to the necessities of making a decent living and adding my miniscule contribution to the world of English letters, but these people have no idea I am very, very lazy when it comes to wanting to be good at things in which I have zero talent.

There are many cool scenes in The Matrix, such as Neo slo-mo limbo-dodging bullets:

This probably ranks quite high on the lists of many, but for me, there is nothing more enticing than Keanu lying down on what looks like a gross dental chaise longue, downloading every single martial arts style ever developed directly into his brain, so he can utter:

How is this not the dream of everyone, to have mastered a craft without the drudgery of actually learning said craft? How many times have I traveled to Paris and heard the sonorous accents of passersby, only to wish I could just understand what they were saying sans keeping my Duolingo streak alive? Every single time.

AI large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude may have captured most of the hype (and the cash), but speaking as a writer, their linguistic abilities pose me scant concern. Sure, they can string together some nice if generic sentences, and I’d be the first to admit that compared to most of the student work I encountered as a college-level creative writing instructor, the chatbots write better ultrashort fiction than those disaffected youths. But the likelihood of LLMs pumping out a complete novel in my remaining lifetime is low. And even if they did, who cares? I already know how to write. Granted, I know I’m light years away from the best writer who ever lived, but I know enough and that’s good enough.

But you know what I don’t know at all? How to write a song, even though I desperately want to. Now of course, I could learn. I could take a course or two…or probably a dozen, since I’m just not musical. Of all the art forms, I find song composition to be the most mysterious. Painting, well, I can see how that’s done: pick up a pencil or a pen or a brush and learn to copy what you see. Even musical instruments, they, too, are a matter of dedication and practice. But to come up with an entire song? Where do you even start?

The only experience I’ve had with songwriting was a chapter in my first novel, which was eventually jettisoned before publication, and deservedly so; it had too little to do with the central story. But it did feature a section where the narrator sings, so for that part, I wrote the pretend lyrics:

I can see you
stocking the Campbell’s aw-ay
even though
you’re not here anymore

I can see you
dancing in aisle eleven
even though
you don’t care anymore

We ran, we kissed
with cans in our hands
we tried, we failed
like some no-frills brands

We ran, we kissed
with cans in our hands
we tried, we failed
like some no-frills brands

Margie, do you remember
that double coupon day long ago
when Harry gave his no-tice
to find his one true love in Fargo

Oh uh-oh, oh uh-oh, oh uh-oh

I can hear you
asking paper or plastic
even though
you’re not here anymore

I can hear you
checking the date on the milk
even though
you don’t care anymore

We ran, we kissed
with jugs in our hands
we tried, we failed
like some no-frills brands

We ran, we kissed
with jugs in our hands
we tried, we failed
like some no-frills brands

Margie, where are you now
do you know how much I need you
now you’re gone, so far gone
did you have to go so far away

I wrote that back in 2008. Fast forward to 2025, when I found this music video:

Boots

Created by the Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson, the entire video, including the singer, is AI generated. The lyrics are the Rudyard Kipling poem “Boots,” which were fed through Suno, which created the music. And the voice. And the song.

I bet you can guess what I did next:

listen to this song

The keywords I used to generate this song were as follows: dream pop, expressive vocals, heartfelt piano, studio-quality, realistic. Does this make me a songwriter? Of course not. It’s more like I posted a want ad, hired musicians, and had them set my silly lyrics to melody.

I don’t know what I’m more awestruck by, the results themselves or the frighteningly small effort I made to achieve them. A few seconds was all it took for Suno to cobble together what is without question a complete song, despites my screwups. For one, I neglected to copy the last line of the lyrics, so the final stanza only has three lines. Was this a problem? Not at all – it cleverly filled in the empty space with a piano riff. An even bigger gaff was that I simply did not write enough lyrics for a full song; I could see that when the generation was taking place, Suno paused after it got to around the 1:45 mark. But then, like magic, it kept churning. Much like the way it patched over the missing final line, Suno brought in previous lyrics and added echoes and other fancy musical doohickies I know nothing about.

While marveling at Suno’s generative capabilities, it was at this point that I felt the guilt of creative laziness. Is this our future, where creation becomes this simple? What will become of us, the humans twenty years from now, when we’ll be able to create an entire music video from scratch by texting a bunch of keywords? Or books? Or films? Or anything, really. 3D printing will only get bigger and faster and better. Will we be able to build a chair while never leaving our chair?

I suppose we’ll all become proficient prompt engineers, which may turn into an artform in itself, though I wonder…

Has anyone ever admired an instruction leaflet?