(Mechanical 7/8 guitar figure. Dry drums, synthetic pulse. Vocal deliberately detached.)
Verse 1
Type a feeling
Pick a sound
Press the button
Call it your own
Twenty songs before your coffee
Thirty more by half past ten
Never heard the second chorus
Post it, prompt it, start again
Perfect voices
Perfect time
Borrowed heartbreak
Factory line
Nothing risked
Nothing changed
Nothing questioned
Nothing strange
(Instruments abruptly stop.)
You made a lot of something.
But did you really make anything?
(Beat returns, heavier.)
Chorus
Slop isn’t how you made it.
Slop is when you didn’t care.
A million possibilities,
a million vacant stares.
The machine can make the pieces.
It can hand you every choice.
But somebody has to listen.
(Music drops.)
Somebody has to…
FEEL IT.
(Full band crashes back in.)
Verse 2
So I gave it something I was thinking,
it gave something back to me,
close enough to fool a stranger,
wrong enough that I could see.
Change the rhythm.
Lose that sentence.
That word’s clever.
Kill it dead.
Nobody talks like that when hurting.
Say the simpler thing instead.
Move the silence.
Hold the downbeat.
Let the ugly moment breathe.
Don’t explain what he’s been feeling.
Give me something
I believe.
(Brief silence.)
Again.
(Band hits.)
Again.
(Harder.)
Again.
Chorus
Slop isn’t how you made it.
Slop is when you didn’t care.
A million possibilities,
a million vacant stares.
The machine can make the pieces.
It can hand you every choice.
But somebody has to listen.
(Music drops.)
Somebody has to…
FEEL IT.
(Full band returns.)
Bridge
(Music strips down to one guitar and a low electronic pulse.)
Maybe hands are part of making.
Maybe making starts before.
Maybe art is in the answer.
Maybe art is asking more.
If a camera takes the picture,
does it change what you see?
If a machine can make the music,
does it change what you feel?
(Full band enters.)
Final Chorus
Slop isn’t artificial.
We’ve been making slop for years.
Bad songs played on real guitars
don’t suddenly become sincere.
And a button doesn’t make you brilliant.
That’s the part we can’t avoid.
If you never make a choice…
(Everything stops.)
You’re not creating.
You’re just making noise.
Outro
(Original mechanical 7/8 riff returns, now played by the full band, imperfect and enormous.)
Generate.
Listen.
Cut it.
Change it.
Break it.
Feel it.
(Stop.)
Make it yours.
ChucklesMcnerd
