Songs of Love writes personalized music for kids — but can AI carry the tune? : NPR

Logan Becker loves his song — it was written just for him. Logan has a rare connective tissue disorder, and in 2020, when he was 9, he received his personalized, upbeat anthem from the Songs of Love Foundation. For nearly 30 years, the nonprofit has worked with a deep bench of professional musicians to produce more than 46,000 tailor-made songs for children with terminal or serious illnesses. “It makes me feel like I’m not the only one that’s going through this — and I fit in,” Logan says in a video he made along with his mother.

Music has long been prized for its therapeutic effects. A 2024 study from the journal Palliative Medicine concludes, “Music therapy provides unique benefits for this paediatric population particularly in supporting child and family wellbeing.”

While Songs of Love is not a music therapy organization — music therapy is a credentialed health care profession, is licensed in many states and requires a degree in music and specialized training in areas like psychology, education and medicine — the nonprofit’s work producing personalized songs for children struggling with enormous challenges provides some of the same benefits.

Logan Becker poses with his “Song of Love” in 2020.

Kimberly Becker

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Kimberly Becker

“ A song is a communal, cultural product that says you’re not alone,” said Kenneth Aigen,  director of the music therapy program at New York University. “And this idea of the universality that someone might feel from having a song written about them, I think, can be quite comforting. A song with biographical elements says that you’re being seen and you’re being heard by other human beings.”

Seeking to build on this positive mission, the Songs of Love Foundation now wants to reach older adults with memory loss, in addition to serving sick children. “My mom had Alzheimer’s, so it’s very personal to me,” said Songs of Love Foundation founder and president John Beltzer in an interview with NPR.

The problem, Beltzer said, is how to engage a population steeped in music from a bygone era, like big band, doo-wop and swing. “There was no way that we could have found enough songwriters out there to be able to create those tracks in an authentic way,” Beltzer said.

So he reached out to the AI music platform Suno for help, and the company responded by giving Songs of Love contributors free access to its music-making tools.

“We will have some songwriters who will take a rough recording of themselves and use our tool to transform that into a well-produced track,” said Suno CEO Mikey Shulman. “We’ll have other ones that need the string section for the chorus.”

Embracing new technology

The Songs of Love Foundation’s embrace of artificial intelligence illustrates its broader interest in new technologies. The nonprofit solicits donations in cryptocurrency and has created videos using Snapchat filters featuring the unrealistic likenesses of celebrities such as Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney appearing, falsely, to endorse the nonprofit. (The nonprofit also has what appears to be real endorsements and song contributions from celebrities, including actor Paul Dano and Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth.)

Its use of AI for music production presents a departure for the foundation from a process that focused until recently on more traditional songwriting methods — i.e., a songwriter composes a song (perhaps with the aid of some technology such as keyboards, drum machines and mixers) and then creates a recording of themselves or another human being playing and singing it.

However, both now and in its pre-AI days, Songs of Love tracks always begin with the same process: The child or a caregiver such as a parent fills out a form with personal details such as the child’s hobbies, names of family members, friends and pets, favorite foods and so on. Songs of Love then allocates a singer-songwriter from its roster with the appropriate musical skill set to create a custom song for the child based on the intake form.

“Maybe they have a blue bicycle. Maybe they have an Aunt Mary or an Uncle Charlie. And they like to go out in the yard and play baseball. That’s their world,” said longtime Songs of Love composer Thomas Jones, one of around 200 musicians working with the foundation. “And I write and I try to illuminate that world back to them to affirm themselves to themselves.”

Singer-songwriter Thomas Jones said he has written “thousands” of songs for the Songs of Love Foundation.

Glenda Kaufman

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Glenda Kaufman

Songs of Love, which retains the copyright on all the songs, used to provide a small stipend to composers for their contributions. Beltzer said the decision to expand the foundation’s services with AI to serve both older adults and kids means creating songs will now become a voluntary activity, as it was during Songs of Love’s early days.

“ We wish we were a for-profit company that was raising money,” Beltzer said. “But going forward, we’re going to be relying on volunteers.”

Jones said regardless, he loves volunteering his time to write songs for people in need. “Validates my life,” the singer-songwriter said. “It’s making the world a better place.”

Jones has been using Suno’s tools a lot lately to create his Songs of Love tracks. He said he feels the same sense of satisfaction when composing a song with AI as he does without it. “To me, it’s just another way of expressing yourself,” Jones said. “It’s a box of crayons.”

The connection challenges of AI

But for others it’s different.

AI companies, including Suno, are currently embroiled in lawsuits for allegedly training their large language models on musicians’ work without authorization. (When asked about the impact of the legal proceedings against his company on its work with Songs of Love, Suno CEO Shulman said, “This is a rapidly evolving and somewhat ambiguous area of the law.”)

Some other nonprofits working in the “music as medicine” space are wary of using AI in their work, both for the potential copyright hazards it presents and also because of the risk that it might erode the crucial human connection between songwriters and the at-risk people they serve.

“ As we’ve grown, we’ve realized that the value of our programming is actually in the depth of the relationships,” said Dan Rubins, the co-founder and executive director of Hear Your Song, a songwriting nonprofit that also works with youths struggling with serious illnesses. “We never want to put an AI tool in the middle of that relationship because it is that connection that can have the most impact on a kid’s well-being and sense of self and self-expression.”

Some Songs of Love composers have similar misgivings.

“Every one of my songs is done, one at a time, the old-fashioned way,” said Ross Orenstein. The singer-songwriter said he created around 600 songs for Songs of Love over the years but recently wanted to change things up. So he started working with Sing Me a Story, another similarly child-oriented songwriting group. He said he still values the work he did for Songs of Love. “It was a great relationship,” Orenstein said.

However, the composer is not a fan of the idea of using AI to create songs for sick children. “It sterilizes the process,” Orenstein said. “You lose a human touch.”

Sangeeta Swamy, a music therapist on the faculty of the California Institute of Integral Studies, agrees. “There is a relationship between the songwriter and the patient — energetically and, you might even say, spiritually. They’re trying to connect,” said Swamy. “AI-generated songs feel different to me. They’re missing that connective, human element.”

The Songs of Love Foundation said it still welcomes contributions from musicians who wish to create songs in more traditional ways.