Colin Meloy of the Decemberists had an interesting idea earlier this year. What if I were to ask ChatGPT to write a song that Colin Meloy of the Decemberists might have written and then record whatever it spits out? And so he did, chords and all. I can’t embed it, but you can head over here to listen to the result.
It sounds almost like a Decemberists song, says me, a person who has heard just enough Decemberists songs to hear this and think yup, that might be those guys. But I also know just enough Decemberists songs to wonder if this is a demo they shelved when they were really young or if it was one of the first things that one of them wrote and maybe home recorded when they were even younger than that. Something that sounds pretty ok by most teenager writes a song standards, but that that teenager would go on to be a little embarrassed by when he got older and made something of himself.
As a technological feat, it’s pretty impressive, not gonna lie. But as a song that an actual veteran songwriter would come up with? Um, no. Not unless that songwriter was trying to write a bad one on purpose. It’s kind of wonky, empty and even a bit nonsensical. the chord changes are weird, the grammar is wrong and some of the rhymes kinda suck (Why are we rhyming “fears” with “dreams”?).
Here are the lyrics and chords, if you’d like to try to play it for some reason.
Verse 1:
C – G – Am – F
In a town by the sea, with a lighthouse tall
C – G – F – C
Where the ships do come, and the seagulls call
I met a man with a heart full of dreams
He told me stories of the sea and its schemes
Chorus:
G – Am – F – C
Of sailors brave, and adventures untold
G – Am – F – C
Of a life on the waves, and a heart grown old
G – Am – F – C
Of a world of discovery, waiting to be sought
G – Am – F – C
In a song that will live, when he is not
Verse 2:
C – G – Am – F
He sang of voyages, and battles at sea
C – G – F – C
Of sea shanties, and storms that rage wild and free
With melodies that echoes through the mist
And took me to a world, that I have missed
Chorus:
G – Am – F – C
Of sailors brave, and adventures untold
G – Am – F – C
Of a life on the waves, and a heart grown old
G – Am – F – C
Of a world of discovery, waiting to be sought
G – Am – F – C
In a song that will live, when he is not
Bridge:
Am – F – C – G
And I know that this man’s song will stay
Am – F – C – G
As a lighthouse’s beam, to guide me on my way
Am – F – C – G
For in his voice, I heard a longing heart
Am – F – C – G
And a tale that will start, a brand new part
Chorus:
G – Am – F – C
Of sailors brave, and adventures untold
G – Am – F – C
Of a life on the waves, and a heart grown old
G – Am – F – C
Of a world of discovery, waiting to be sought
G – Am – F – C
In a song that will live, when he is not
Outro:
C – G – Am – F
So let us sing, of this man’s sweet sound
C – G – F – C
And let our hearts and our feet hit the ground
C – G – Am – F
For in this place, we’re free from all our fears
C – G – F – C
And his song takes us, to our wildest dreams.
As long as we live in a world where music is more than whatever 12 songs the radio is beating to death this week, I don’t think songwriters need to worry about the rise of the machines just yet. To paraphrase Meloy in his conclusion, you can’t learn feeling and intuition from the internet.
But I think you’d agree that there’s something lacking, beyond the little obvious glitches — the missed or repeated rhymes, the grammatical mistakes, the overall banality of the content. Getting the song down, I had to fight every impulse to better the song, to make it resolve where it doesn’t otherwise, to massage out the weirdnesses. I wanted to stay as true to its creator’s vision as possible, and at the end, there’s just something missing. I want to say that ChatGPT lacks intuition. That’s one thing an AI can’t have, intuition. It has data, it has information, but it has no intuition. One thing I learned from this exercise: so much of songwriting, of writing writing, of creating, comes down to the creator’s intuition, the subtle changes that aren’t written as a rule anywhere — you just know it to be right, to be true. That’s one thing an AI can’t glean from the internet.
