I write all (and that means ALL) of the lyrics for Xeo and The Portals songs (but only some of the music.) The only exception has been the first SUNO song I made which is 'Sky's End'. I altered many of the lyrics for that, but it was initially SUNO generated.
This new song and all of the others are all 100% my own lyrics.
I find that well structured lyrics are as important as a good instrumental and music-theory prompt when using SUNO. It pushes the model into new experiments and relieves some of the processing load.
A few things have changed in the several months since I last tried this, however. The new SUNO 5.5 model has to be told explicitly at the prompt to do counterpoint for dense polyphonic layering. 4.5 did this by default. 5.5 kind of commercially over-produces and seems to want to eliminate all of the juicy busyness that makes for a truly great piece of music.
I intentionally wrote this piece with the same sentential structure and verse structure as one of the pieces which worked well in the past (Strange Attractor). I used principles from poetry to recreate the same syllabic and phonemic counts, measures, and cadences. It wasn't as constraining as I expected, and due to the new apparent anti-polyphony features of SUNO v5.5 it didn't produce results that I felt were as good as v4.5 achieved with Strange Attractor.
So for SUNO v5.5 it transpires that one of the most important prompt elements (in addition to asking for syncopation, invention, inventive motifs, interludes, bridges...) is: "Dense counterpoint and dense polyphonic layering."
I wasn't able to get SUNO v5.5 to get anything close to the excellence of the v4.5-produced Strange Attractor.
ETERNAL REBURN
[Verse]
Sirens and Byrons and femme fatales fawning,
Floral arrangements and sour breath in the morning,
The world soon awakens to another red flag,
What started as frictionless soon starts to drag.
[Verse]
Chemistry scheming and perilous dreaming,
Reaching and touching and lost without meaning,
Person to personal souls put to suffering,
Hold me and have me I might need some buffering
[Prechorus]
It's strange
That we try
When it's fraught
[Chorus]
The most epic puzzle,
In grim groups we huddle,
All irreversibly broken,
A perpetual omen,
A boat which should be scuttled
[Verse]
Eternal return minted into bad tokens,
Whispers of savagery but spirits unbroken,
A shimmering sigil hangs in the heavens,
It codes for the death of all good intentions
[Verse]
Corporeal awareness in a dead race condition,
Perpetual drama with no intermission,
Founders and fathers and mothers and demons,
Ovaries and gonads and oceans of sea men
[Prechorus]
It's insane
That we try
Life's too short
[Chorus]
The most tiring puzzle,
In sad pairs we muddle,
The irreversibly broken,
A perpetual omen,
In a boat that's being scuttled
[Verse]
Suffer the children and oh the humanity,
Averting disaster inviting calamity,
Journeys and ventures and conquering all things,
Superman rises but you're nowhere and nothing
[Verse]
In the final analysis: only paralysis,
Whose idea wasn't it anyway all of this,
Hold that thing steady my life is not ready,
The damage is done and the feeling is heady
[Bridge]
Whose idea
Wasn't this
To begin
It all for
[Chorus]
The most tiring puzzle,
In holes dug we puddle,
The stupidly broken,
All oracular showmen,
In a boat that's befuddled
