Paris, Texas: Turning Hometown Memories into a Song

The link above takes you to a song about my hometown, Paris, Texas. The memories are mine. ChatGPT helped me shape them into lyrics, and an AI music app called Suno created the music and vocals.

Let me say up front: I have little musical talent. But I can write, and I have plenty of stories about growing up in Paris.

For this song, I wanted a country sound with a little ’90s heartland flavor and a male vocalist. Before asking AI to help, I sat down and wrote the backstory—the people, places, and moments I wanted the song to bring to life.

I remembered our high school principal, the downtown fountain, the barbershop near campus, and the Grand Theater. I wrote about the loop we kids drove between the Sonic Drive-In and the Two Kiss Drive-In, listening to the radio and enjoying ourselves. At the time, we were just having fun. Looking back, we were making memories that would stay with us for a lifetime.

With that backstory in hand, I asked ChatGPT to help turn it into lyrics, using the style I had described. Its draft gave me a starting point. I corrected details, changed some wording, and worked through revisions until the lyrics reflected what I wanted to say.

Then came Suno—the music machine.

I chose a paid subscription for the features I wanted, entered the lyrics, and described the sound I had in mind. Within a few minutes, I had several versions to listen to and choose from. Hearing those familiar places and memories come back to me in a finished song was something else.

I shared the song in a Facebook group devoted to growing up in Paris, Texas. I could hardly have found a better audience.

The response surprised me. People who remembered those same places began listening, commenting, and sharing. A Facebook friend offered to pair the song with photographs of Paris from years ago. He did a wonderful job matching the pictures to the lyrics, giving the memories another dimension.

Between the original song and his video version, I believe the combined views have exceeded 20,000. For a song that began with my hometown recollections, that is more than I ever expected.

Most of the response was enthusiastic, but one local performer and songwriter strongly objected to AI’s involvement. Although I had explained how ChatGPT and Suno helped create the song, he felt I needed to give ChatGPT more explicit credit for the lyrics.

We disagreed, but his criticism raised a question worth discussing: How should we describe authorship when a person supplies the memories, direction, and revisions, while AI writes the lyrics and produces the music?

I understand why that concerns people who have spent years honing their skills as musicians and songwriters. Questions about credit, creativity, and earning a living deserve thoughtful consideration. I explored some of those issues in another post, “What Is Art?”.

For me, this experience opened a door. I could take memories I had carried for decades and turn them into something people could hear, enjoy, and recognize as part of their own lives.

The technology made the process surprisingly easy. What moved me most, though, was the response from people who grew up in the same town. A theater, a fountain, a drive-in, a song on the radio—small things that still mean something all these years later.

That is what I hoped the song would capture: a little of the Paris we remember, and the feeling of having grown up there.