I’ve been thinking a lot about where AI fits into my creative process and where it doesn’t. The conversation around AI in music is messy, and as an independent artist I’ve had to figure out what feels authentic for me.
This is the clearest way to put it:
AI does not touch my music. It doesn’t write my songs, sing my vocals or replace my creativity. The emotion, the voice, the writing, the delivery, that’s all mine. That part of the process is human, personal and lived. I don’t want a machine doing what only experience can do.
Where AI does help is in the visual planning stage.
I realised something important while working on the early ideas for the GHOST2·0 video. I don’t want a fully AI-generated video representing my work. It doesn’t sit right with the message I’m putting out: human music, human emotion, human storytelling. What the AI draft did give me, though, was a blueprint. It helped me map out pacing, scenes, mood and atmosphere — and now I’m using that as a guide to film real footage myself.
So the final GHOST2·0 video will be made with actual camera work, real shots of me, real movement and a mix of curated visuals. The AI version wasn’t the product — it was the storyboard.
The same applies to artwork. I only use AI to sketch out concepts I already have in my head. I don’t have access to full studio setups for every release, but I still know exactly how I want things to look. AI helps me prototype the idea, and then I shape, edit and build the final visual myself. It supports the vision — it doesn’t create it. That is done in photoshop.
For me the line is simple:
AI can assist the process. It cannot replace the artist.
Some people use AI to make songs even if they can’t sing or write melodies. I get why, but that’s not the path I’m on. Being an artist is a craft. It’s taken me three years of learning, failing, improving and finding my voice to get to where I am, and I’m still evolving. A perfect AI-generated vocal might sound impressive, but it’s emotionally empty. There’s no breath, no intention, no lived moment behind it.
I’m not interested in AI making my music for me. I’m interested in tools that help me express the ideas I already have — more clearly, more creatively and more affordably.
The heart of the work stays human. AI just helps me build the world around it.
I know some people will say that AI music gives them the chance to create songs even if they cannot sing or write melodies. I understand the appeal, but that is not the same as being a music artist. Singing, writing and learning how to express yourself through sound is a craft. It takes years to develop. For me it has taken three years of learning, failing, improving and creating my own songs to reach the point I am at now. It is still a constant evolution.
The work changes as I change. When an AI sings a perfect vocal or produces a flawless melody, it might sound impressive but it is emotionally hollow. There is no lived experience behind it. There is no breath, no intention, no vulnerability. The imperfections in a real vocal are part of what makes music human. An AI can imitate the shape of a song, but it cannot give it a soul.
I am not interested in AI making music or performing vocals. I am interested in using whatever tools help me express an idea more clearly and more affordably. The heart of the work remains human. AI just helps me reach the parts of the process I cannot reach on my own.
Scrolling for Love came out of a pretty blunt reality: after being single for more than five years and living in a place where I rarely cross paths with other gay men, the only place to meet people is online. And honestly? It feels wrong most of the time.
Everything about modern dating apps feels engineered, curated profiles, photos that look nothing like real life, endless swiping, people disappearing mid-conversation, and a whole ecosystem built around selling the fantasy of connection. It’s transactional, shallow, and at times completely scammy. I don’t meet people in real life here, but online doesn’t feel like real life either. So you end up stuck between two worlds.
That’s where the song came from. Not heartbreak. Not yearning. Just frustration.
And that same frustration runs through the music world too. Online spaces are gatekept. It’s not that my audience isn’t out there, it’s that modern platforms decide who gets seen. Everything is pay-to-play now. Organic reach is practically dead. If you’re not “viral,” “TikTok safe,” or “Insta-worthy,” you’re invisible.
Meanwhile the human psyche is addicted to outrage, drama, and conflict — the exact opposite of the kind of music or energy I put out. So you either play the game or you accept its limitations. Scrolling was my way of choosing neither, just naming the experience without turning it into a performance.
If anything, the song is about building healthier expectations and boundaries around the online world. Knowing what I’m actually looking for. Knowing what I refuse to chase. And being honest about the fact that both love and music now live inside systems that don’t always reward sincerity.
Scrolling for Lovewas me channelling all of that, the loneliness, the algorithm, the fake connection, the hope, the irritation, the honesty. It was the moment I stopped blaming myself for something that’s bigger than me.
This new version is bigger, cleaner, and more cinematic — the sound I always wanted this track to have. It’s fully re-produced from the ground up and hits a lot harder than the original.
The pre-save is now live, and it genuinely helps more than anything. If you’ve been following my music this year, this is the one I’m most proud of so far.
When I was sixteen, I stepped into the music world believing I was ready for it. I wasn’t. I wanted the dream so badly that I didn’t see how exposed I really was. That age is all hunger and imagination. You think you’re invincible because nothing bad has happened yet. You think a yes will change everything, and a no will never come. At sixteen, I genuinely believed I could be chosen and lifted into a life that looked golden from the outside.
It was the age of glossy boybands, rehearsed charm, rigid styling, and perfect harmonies. I found myself auditioning for one of them. Each round I passed felt like confirmation that fate was involved. I didn’t understand the machinery beneath it all, the way decisions had nothing to do with who could sing and everything to do with what could be sold.
We had sessions with Shirley Bassey’s singing teacher. She was fierce, perceptive, the kind of woman who could hear your entire emotional landscape in a single note. Before the final decision, she pulled me aside and said something I wasn’t old enough to fully process. “Andrew, if you don’t get chosen, it won’t be because of your voice. Out of all of them, you’re the best singer. It’s about the look they’re going for.”
Those words hit with a strange duality. They were both a reassurance and a judgment. I heard the compliment, but I didn’t yet understand the truth sitting inside it. I wasn’t being evaluated as a human being with a voice. I was being measured as a product. My voice was irrelevant. My face was the deal-breaker. At sixteen, that realisation sinks into the bones like cold water.
A few hours later, the no arrived.
It didn’t matter that the boyband barely made an impact. It didn’t matter that another group exploded at the same time and dominated the charts (a clue: The Irish came from the west). What mattered was that the dream I had pinned to my self-worth snapped in half. Something inside me folded. I didn’t rant or fall apart. I just went silent. Quiet silence is a different kind of pain. It’s the kind you carry for decades because you never gave yourself permission to feel it.
Without even naming it, I stopped singing. I walked away from something I loved because I assumed it didn’t want me back. I didn’t revisit that part of myself for almost thirty years.
People think dreams die loudly. They don’t. They submerge. They find a shadowed corner inside you and wait for your life to make room for them again.
Decades went by. I became an adult with responsibilities, bills, heartbreaks, jobs, survival. I built a life with no space for the boy who wanted to sing. But he never left. He just waited for a crack in the armour.
Then, one day, something small shifted. Not a dramatic moment. Not an epiphany. Just a quiet tug in the chest. A feeling that I had abandoned a part of myself I wasn’t supposed to abandon forever. I opened a music app, pressed a key, and sang a line. It felt like tapping a stone buried under the earth and hearing something alive beneath it.
My voice was older now. Deeper, steadier, carrying more truth than it ever did at sixteen. It didn’t sound like the voice of a boy chasing fame. It sounded like someone who had lived.
This time, though, I wasn’t stepping into the industry blind. I knew exactly what it was. The music industry is not a fair system. It’s not even a system. It’s a creature.
A lion.
Magnificent, powerful, hypnotic. It draws people in with the promise of safety, approval, elevation. But beneath that golden exterior live teeth and hunger. And the ones most vulnerable to the lion’s appetite are the ones who want its attention the most.
I was the lamb. I had always been the lamb. Soft, open-hearted, full of yearning. Yearning is dangerous. It makes you walk toward the very thing that can consume you.
This time, when labels began showing interest, I felt the old pull. The warmth. The sense of being seen. Words like potential and fresh sound. At sixteen, these words would have been oxygen. Now they felt familiar in a way that was both comforting and unsettling.
But adulthood gives you the one thing a teenager never has: pattern recognition.
The tone shifted. Compliments turned into expectations. Interest turned into extraction. Labels wanted me to fund everything myself: the production, the marketing, the promotion. They wanted my time, my energy, my money, my effort. What they offered in return wasn’t safety, structure, or partnership. It was intangible guidance. Wisdom. Suggestions. Knowledge presented like gold but impossible to hold.
And that’s when I understood the dynamic fully. The lion doesn’t want your talent. The lion wants your devotion. It wants your hunger because hunger makes you compliant. Hunger makes you easy to shape. Hunger makes you a useful meal.
I stepped back before the jaws could close.
And then something unexpected happened. Instead of shrinking, I expanded. I began creating music for myself. I wrote and released song after song. Narcissist. True Love Is Inside You. Capsized Heart. About Love. Ghost. Scrolling for Love. Running Away. Each one felt like stitching together a wound that had been open since I was sixteen.
But even then, the journey wasn’t smooth. I pushed too hard. Burned myself out promoting everything. Chased numbers. Refreshed stats. Wanted proof that I wasn’t delusional. On the worst days, the old sixteen-year-old voice whispered, maybe they were right about you.
But growth rarely arrives as a dramatic transformation. It comes in small, honest moments. Mine came while listening to a new mix of Ghost 2.0. For the first time, I heard myself clearly. My voice wasn’t the voice of a hopeful amateur anymore. It was a voice with weight. Professional. Emotional. True. And I realised something profound: I had become the artist I once needed someone else to believe I could be.
I had become him without anyone choosing me.
That was the turning point. I stopped craving the lion’s gaze. I stopped feeding the fantasy that someone else needed to lift me. Sobriety sharpened everything. It cut through the illusions I’d held since sixteen. I no longer wanted fame. I wanted truth. I wanted a creative life built on intention, not desperation. I wanted to grow at a pace that didn’t break me.
And in that quiet, everything started growing naturally. Listeners have found me slowly. The right ones. The honest ones. Not masses. Not noise. Just genuine connection.
Now I understand the real story I’ve been living. It was never about becoming a lion myself. It was never about defeating the lion. It wasn’t even about escaping the lion.
The real power is this:
The lamb doesn’t survive by becoming stronger than the lion. The lamb survives by no longer believing the lion is a god.
I am singing again. Not to rewrite the rejection from when I was sixteen. Not to chase the fantasy of overnight success. Not to win the approval of an industry built to feed on people like me.
I am singing because the voice I abandoned didn’t abandon me. It waited, patient and quiet, until I was finally old enough, brave enough, and grounded enough to choose myself.
Over the past few days I’ve been watching a creator called ContraPoints on YouTube, and it’s genuinely been a game-changer for me. Her videos are long, philosophical deep dives into culture, psychology, identity, art, and the way we make sense of the world.
It was exactly what I needed after feeling bored with mindless streaming. Most shows feel average or repetitive, and I’d been craving something that wasn’t afraid to go deep or handle complexity. Her Twilight deep dive surprised me by going into really rich territory about desire, fantasy, and human psychology.
That’s where she talked about yearning and craving, and it hit me harder than I expected.
Yearning is longing for something that doesn’t actually exist. It sounds like: “I miss the good old days,” “I just want things to be like they used to be,” “I want that perfect partner or perfect life I imagine in my head.” It’s a longing for a lost past that can never return or an idealised future that was never real to begin with. Because the thing itself isn’t real, yearning can never be satisfied.
Craving is different. You can satisfy a craving, but only for a short time. It sounds like: “I’m craving a drink,” “I need sugar,” “I want a big night out.” These things can be reached. You can have the drink, the sweets, the night out. But an hour, a day, a week or a month later the craving comes back. It never stays.
That’s when I realised my old idea of success in music lived in the yearning category. It was this vague fantasy version of something I’d never defined or experienced. And craving was the temptation to chase viral moments or quick hits of validation that fade instantly.
Seeing it clearly has reset everything for me.
I’m done with fantasy goals. I’m focusing on real, grounded, intentional progress that I can actually experience and build on. GHOST 2.0 is my first step in that direction.
When I started shaping the artwork for Ghost 2.0, I kept circling back to one of my favourite covers – Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse’s Valerie. There’s something timeless about it: the torn paper edges, that mix of colour and shadow, the raw soul of Amy’s voice spilling through production that feels both retro and modern. It captures what I wanted for Ghost 2.0 – reflection, nostalgia, and a bit of grit under the polish.
Most people know Valerie as an Amy Winehouse song, but it actually began with Liverpool band The Zutons in 2006. Frontman Dave McCabe wrote it about an American woman named Valerie Star, his ex-girlfriend who’d planned to move to the UK before a string of driving offences stopped her. The lyrics – “Did you have to go to jail, put your house up for sale…” – were quite literal. When Ronson and Winehouse reimagined it a year later, they turned a very specific story into something universal: longing, regret, and the messiness of love.
Valerie Star herself later told Vice that she still can’t listen to the song without feeling strange. “It’s kind of surreal,” she said. “I can’t keep the song on my shuffle playlist… I feel like it would come up at the most awkward times. Like, hey, just listening to a song about myself – don’t mind me.”
That blend of truth, irony, and reinvention hooked me. The idea that a song – and even its artwork – can travel through different lives and still hold emotional truth feels close to what Ghost 2.0 stands for. My artwork borrows that torn-paper aesthetic from Valerie, but filters it through a different lens: what happens when you peel back layers of identity, nostalgia, and self-image to see what’s really there.
It struck me that Ghost 2.0 mirrors Valerie in more ways than one. Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse took a song that already existed – The Zutons’ Valerie, released just a year earlier – and reimagined it with new life and emotion. It wasn’t about erasing the original; it was about revealing another layer that had always been there, waiting to be heard.
That’s what this version of Ghost is for me. It’s the same song at its core, but it breathes differently now. I sometimes wonder if The Zutons could go back in time, would they reimagine Valerie themselves? Maybe not to compete with what came after, but to reclaim it – to express how it felt watching their own creation take on a second life.
That’s the beauty of art. Once it’s out in the world, it evolves. Ghost 2.0 is me doing exactly that – revisiting something I already made, not to fix it, but to let it speak in a new voice. GHOST2.0 will be released in January 2026.
When I wrote Ghost, it came from a place of feeling invisible in relationships, like I’d slowly disappear just to keep the peace. Times when I was scared to say what I really felt because honesty might push someone away. It’s that quiet prison where your sensitivity feels like something to hide. I’ve often found myself trapped in my own thoughts, replaying conversations, trying to work out where I went wrong, when really the truth is simpler: I was never seen for who I really am. I was hiding it to feel accepted.
Looking back, I realise that I started off already carrying a lot of emotional damage. Not because of my family or anything dramatic, but because of the world I grew up in. Society made me believe I was wrong. Being gay in the shadow of the AIDS crisis was hard. That fear and stigma hung over everything. It told me that who I was wasn’t safe, that to be myself was to risk rejection or disgust. I grew up absorbing the message that different meant bad.
When I was a teenager, I was extremely emotional. I felt things deeply and was often told that was wrong or too much. I used to think love meant big gestures and endless devotion, the kind of love you hear in songs like Celine Dion’s Because You Loved Me or You Are the Reason. Those songs shaped how I saw love, something pure, consuming, and unconditional. I believed that if I loved someone with that intensity, they’d see me and value me. So when I felt love for the first time, I grabbed onto it with both hands and was terrified to let go. It wasn’t really the person I was clinging to, it was the fantasy of what love could give me, acceptance and belonging.
Over time I learned that real love isn’t about losing yourself in someone else’s story. It’s not about shrinking so someone else can feel comfortable.
Lines like “the light flickers in my head” came from that space of rediscovery. It’s about those moments when I almost remember my worth. It’s there, but it fades. The light represents the truth of what I deserve, kindness, care, honesty, but sometimes it only shines for a second before the doubt returns. The song became a way of processing that grief, the loss of what I hoped love would be, and the realisation that parts of me had been dimmed to survive.
The ghost also represents those false ideas of love that I used to hold onto. The fantasy that love could save me, that being good or patient or endlessly forgiving would somehow make someone stay. I grieved those illusions the same way I grieved people. Every time a relationship ended, it wasn’t just losing them, it was losing another layer of belief in that fairy-tale.
Ghost is about reclaiming the parts of me that went quiet. The sensitive, emotional, hopeful parts I once thought were wrong. It’s about recognising that being unseen doesn’t mean being unworthy, and that sometimes the most haunting presence is that version of me trying to be loved and accepted by others, but now I know that comes from within me. In that way, the ghost isn’t just a loss, it’s also a reminder of everything still waiting to come back to life.
When I was writing Running Away, it carried a lot of meanings for me. It reflects different moments where I realised that how I look at something completely changes how I feel about it. You can see loss, or you can see opportunity. The situation might be the same, but the perspective changes everything.
There were times when I dulled pain, isolated myself, or hid away because I thought I had to be fixed before anyone could see me. That mindset kept me small. What I see now is that those moments weren’t failures, they were signals. They showed me what needed to change and what I was capable of facing.
I’ve been through relationships where I stayed too long because I believed that was all I deserved. But each time I reached that edge, something inside me spoke up. It said you don’t have to stay stuck in this story. That voice became stronger over time. It started guiding me toward curiosity instead of fear, toward understanding instead of escape.
That’s what Running Away represents, not the act of leaving, but the decision to see things differently. It’s about movement, awareness, and how choosing a new lens can turn pain into possibility. The song is that inner voice reminding me that change comes from seeing more clearly.
Every ending holds a beginning. When something falls apart, it clears space for what’s next . Running Away sits in that space between the two – the moment you realise that loss isn’t only about what’s gone, it’s also about what can now grow. The ending is just the point where awareness turns into movement.
Every lyric in Running Away is a conversation between who I was and who I’m becoming. It’s not about rejecting the past but recognising growth. Life will always have its mess, but perspective decides whether it feels heavy or freeing. When you shift how you see it, everything opens up.
The more I create, the clearer it becomes that music only finds meaning when it’s shared with intention. Not pushed or hyped, just offered honestly.
I’ve started focusing on the places where real connection still happens. The moments where a song reaches someone because it speaks their language, not because a system decided it should. That kind of connection doesn’t need noise, it needs care.
I’m building my own space around that idea. A website that feels like a home base, somewhere listeners can wander and discover naturally. A mailing list that’s more like a letter, a quiet way to talk directly to people who care about the music. Simple, genuine contact.
Collaboration is also part of it. When you work with another artist who shares your values, the exchange is grounding. It’s not about trading audiences, it’s about shared curiosity. Talking about production choices, the story behind a lyric, or a creative spark that led to something new. Those conversations remind me why I make music at all.
Social media still has a role, but I use it differently now. One meaningful post can do more than a month of filler. A single clip that carries a feeling is stronger than five chasing attention. The same applies to visuals, artwork, short videos, photos. Each piece is part of a story told slowly and deliberately.
I’ve also started to think in seasons instead of cycles. Not everything needs to lead straight to a release. Some periods are for writing, others for shaping sound, and others for stillness. When the pace slows down, the quality rises. The music starts to reflect where I actually am, not where I think I should be.
What keeps me grounded is remembering that every song already matters once it feels true. Numbers can’t measure that. The listeners who are meant to find it will find it through honesty and timing. Real resonance doesn’t need a shortcut.
So the work now is simple. Keep creating. Keep sharing. Keep refining. Stay open and visible without forcing it. Let the songs travel at their own pace.
The more I move this way, the lighter it feels. Music returns to what it’s supposed to be, a human exchange. Not a campaign, not a metric. Just one person sending something out into the world, and another person somewhere receiving it.
The other night I watched the TV broadcast of Wicked: One Wonderful Night, a celebration filled with live performances that, on the surface, were flawless. Every singer hit their notes perfectly. The harmonies were seamless, the sound mix pristine, and the camera work captured every emotional beat. It was impressive, but the longer I watched, the more it started to feel strangely hollow. Not because the performers weren’t talented — they were incredible — but because the whole thing was so polished that it lost its sense of being alive.
It reminded me how perfection can start to feel fake when every human edge is smoothed out. Even live music, which used to be about risk and spontaneity, now often sounds like a studio recording dressed up as a live event. The vocals are tuned, the mix is cleaned, and the energy is controlled. You end up with something technically flawless but emotionally sterile. It’s like staring at a wax figure that looks exactly like the person, but doesn’t breathe.
What this kind of broadcast quietly tells the audience is that this is the new standard — that live performers are supposed to sound flawless every time, with no cracks, no fatigue, no risk. It trains people to expect superhuman precision from artists who are, in reality, just people using their voices like anyone else uses their hands. The bar looks impossibly high, but it isn’t real. It’s a studio illusion dressed up as live truth, and it leaves both performers and listeners chasing something that doesn’t actually exist. The danger is that when real live music happens — when someone misses a note or their voice trembles — the audience mistakes honesty for failure.
In music, the small imperfections are what make a performance human — a slightly cracked note, a breath that hits too hard, a moment where someone pushes their voice past comfort because they’re caught in the feeling. Those moments are alive. They connect us. We don’t remember a show because it was perfect; we remember it because it made us feel something real. But the culture of performance right now, especially in mainstream pop and televised specials, seems obsessed with producing “live perfection.” It’s marketed as authenticity, but it’s actually control disguised as truth.
I’ve felt the pull of that pressure as an artist too. The idea that every song, every mix, every vocal take has to sound “industry ready” — balanced, bright, competitive. But the more you chase that standard, the more you lose the original spark of what you were trying to say. There’s a difference between craft and control. Craft refines; control sterilises. A mix can enhance emotion, but when you start correcting emotion itself, you cross into something else entirely.
Watching Wicked that night, I found myself thinking about how much of art now is engineered to remove vulnerability. Even shows that are supposed to celebrate human emotion end up feeling like they’ve been digitally ironed until nothing creases. We call it professionalism, but sometimes it’s just fear — fear of being caught sounding too human.
As someone who grew up loving raw performances, that loss bothers me. When you hear Freddie Mercury miss a note, it’s still glorious because you hear his humanity in it. When Elton John’s voice breaks slightly on a ballad, it adds weight, not weakness. Those artists didn’t have to be perfect to be powerful. They knew that emotion isn’t tidy.
So when I watch these modern “live” spectacles, I can’t help feeling that we’re watching the life drained out of something that used to breathe. It’s a strange kind of irony: the more technology we use to sound human, the less human it becomes. Maybe that’s what authenticity is now — not about being flawless, but about daring to sound alive again.
