Originally Posted by Sunset Poet
Nothing is being mixed up.

I'm not talking about literal facts.
I'm talking about prevalent attitudes amongst serious musicians and "people actually in the music business" that I have personally encountered.

The majority seem to view "songwriters" who do not sing reasonably well or play an instrument reasonably well as...pretenders. The attitude in that industry seems to be that good music comes from good musicians.

Before he made it big, Chris Stapleton was a bonafide songwriter.
Sunset Poet is a guy enjoying a hobby.
Sunset Poet can sing some songs adequately and plays guitar pretty well, so he has that.
If he could not sing or play worth beans...he would be a "pretender" to many in that business.

It is a fact that someone who cannot sing or play anything ...can write "lyrics" and sing some version of them into a cell phone recording app. Almost always sounds terrible.
BUT NOW, SUNO can blow such cat-scratchings up into a truly good and well produced recording.

Once done, such a songwriter can call themselves a "songwriter." That would be a literal fact.

But I doubt that the vast majority of people actually in the music industry would see them as anything other than a pretender or a tag-along.

Beauty is in the eye. It comes down to what a person wants to believe.


I think I understand your point better now, Marty. And I suppose I'm one of the people you're describing. I don't sing particularly well, my keyboard skills are limited, and I use tools like Melodyne or do MIDI programming to get the result I hear in my head.

But I don't see that as making me a “pretender” or a “tag-along.” I'm a songwriter who happens to have limited performance skills. If I had more money, I'd simply hire better musicians and a better singer. Technology allows me to do more of that myself.

And that's where I disagree with the premise that “good music comes from good musicians.” Good performances come from good musicians. Good songs come from good songwriters. Sometimes they're the same person, sometimes they're not.

Suno and similar tools simply make that separation much more obvious. They allow people who aren't great performers to turn their songs into convincing recordings. Whether the songs themselves are good is still a completely separate question.