A song about my hometown of Paris

A Texas Town Called Paris

The link above will take you to a song I co-wrote with an AI app (ChatGPT). The song was sung by an AI app called Suno about my hometown, Paris, Texas.

First let me say up front, I have little musical talent. But, I can write.

To write a song using AI for assistance with rhymes and flow, I start by writing what I want to accomplish with my song, the genre, tempo, and whether I wanted a male or female vocalist. In this case I wanted a country genre, 90's heartland sound with a male singer.

Then I started writing things that I remember about growing up in my hometown. I wrote about the high school principal, the fountain downtown, a barbershop near campus, the popular theater downtown, and the loop we kids drove between the Sonic Drive-In and Two Kiss Drive-In, playiong songs on the radio and having fun.

After writing my "backstory" I moved on to the easy part. I fed this information to ChatGPT (I have a subscription) and requested lyrics for a country genre, 90's heartland song using my backstory to write the lyrics.

I had to change the lyrics to correct some things, but it was easy enough to do.

Next came Suno, the music machine. You can get a free subscription to Suno, but it is more limited capability and I wanted features only offered by a paid subscripion, so I bought one.

I told Suno I wanted a country genre, 90's heartland sound with a male singer. That was pretty much it. Press a button and within 2-3 minutes you will have 3 song versions to choose from.

The downtown square of Paris, Texas

I posted the song on Facebook, in a group chat room about "growing up in Paris, Texas." That was a perfect audience for my song. The song literally blew up the channel. The song became very popular, quickly. A Facebook friend wanted to put the song to pictures of Paris back in the day. He was a very effective editor and the lyrics matched the photos all the way through the song.

Between the views of my song before the video, combined with his video version, I am sure we have had over 10,000 views. That is amazing.

The Grand Theater in downtown Paris, Texas holds many memories for me and formed a couple of lyurics in thje song.

Along with the accolades came one very vocal criticism. A Paris local, who was also a performer and songwriter, did not appreciate AIs involvement in writing the song. And while I was transparent about the role AI played in producing this music, the antagonist persisted and felt I needed to say even more about who wrote the song (ChatGPT).

Music authorship is controversial. I have written another blog (https://www.ronragan.com/post/what-is-art) about AI's role in creating art. I am quite sure artists and musicians everywhere must be questioning where this will all end, particulalry financially.

It really was easy to write a polished song and publish it. AI is gaining traction in the worlds of art and music.