Everyone Is Arguing About AI Music, But That’s Not What This Is About
The tools have changed. The impulse to create hasn’t.
I fell down a comment-thread rabbit hole this morning, the way you do when the coffee is good and the world feels a little sideways. The thread was under an article about an artist named Aventhis who has put out four albums in two months using AI tools like Suno.
The music is doing big numbers many artists dream of.
People are reacting.
The takes are… heated.
On one side: “Prompting is an art. Production has changed. This is creativity.”
On the other: “This is stealing from real artists. This is lazy. This is fake.”
And then the voice of a 73-year-old woman who wrote:
“I’ve been a songwriter my whole life. Suno has helped me feel like myself again.”
That right there is what knocked me over, an honest comment that’s closer to the truth than any of the others.
What I realized reading through all of this is: the argument isn’t actually about music.
The argument is about identity.
My Part in This Story
To be clear: I’m in this world too.
I’ve been a lyricist since I was kid. My teenage bedroom walls were covered with lyrics I’d copied by hand from liner notes inside albums by Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Who, Grand Master Flash.
Words have been my medium since long before AI entered the room. But how many times could I hear melodies in my mind that I couldn’t physically bring into form? Too many to count. I didn’t have a band on call. I didn’t have a studio. I didn’t have the technical chops to produce the sound I could hear inside.
And now, I do.
Through Suno, I built a band that exists because I willed it into being. Not imaginary, not fake, but real in the sense that it moves me, it expresses me, it carries emotional truths that belong to me.
When I make these songs public one day, maybe they’ll earn me a little pocket money. Maybe not.
That’s not why I made them.
I made them because something in me asked to be heard.
And for the first time in years, I could answer that call without asking for permission.
That feeling is pure joy, freedom, and makes me feel alive.
I refuse to let someone on the internet declare that inauthentic.
What’s Really Going On Here
When someone says:
“AI music is fake.”
What they often mean is:
“If anyone can make music now, then what does that make me?”
When someone says:
“Prompting isn’t real production.”
What they mean is:
“I built my whole self on the idea that skill is the gatekeeper. If the gate disappears, who am I?”
When someone says:
“It’s statistically impossible that he earned those streams.”
What they mean is:
“The system was already stacked against me. Now it feels impossible.”
Chord progressions, copyright law, or the sanctity of the recording studio have little to nothing to do with any of this.
This is grief.
The grief of watching the ground shift beneath your feet in real time.
The grief of realizing that the thing you thought made you special you may now have to redefine.
The grief of not being asked first.
The Purity Myth
There’s a deeply embedded belief in the Arts (capital A) that struggle equals authenticity.
If it was hard to create, it was real. If it was painful, it was earned.
If it appears like it was easy, people raise their eyebrows. Suspicion fills the room.
But what if ease is not the enemy? What if ease is just… new?
We don’t know yet. That’s the honest part.
The tools have changed faster than the meaning around them.
And meaning takes time.
The 73-Year-Old Woman Is the Future
The comment that I can’t stop thinking about:
“With Suno, I feel like I’m creating a new version of myself, one that’s bold, beautiful, and unafraid.”
She didn’t mention: royalties, platform politics, the “realness” of the sound, or whether people think she “deserves” to make music.
She talked about joy. She talked about expression. She talked about healing.
And that is something we’re all going to have to reckon with:
Some people will use these tools to bypass effort.
But some people will use them to reclaim parts of themselves they thought were gone forever.
Both truths can exist at once.
The Real Question Ahead
Not:
Is AI music real music? (That debate is already lost — history moves one direction.)
But:
What makes art human now?
Is it:
Emotion?
Intention?
Taste?
Presence?
The story behind how it came to be?
If we let the answer evolve, we evolve.
If we cling to the old definition, we shrink.
Personally, I’m interested in what expands us.
The Story Is Still Being Written
And we’re smack dab in the middle of it.
People will always find ways to make meaning. People will always find ways to create connection. People will always make art with whatever tools are available.
What changes isn’t whether we create. What changes is the doorway.
And maybe the point isn’t to defend the old doorway, or worship the new one.
Maybe the point is just to keep walking.
Like you mean it.