AUSTIN — On a wall in Susan Scrupski’s apartment hang four guitars. She’s been learning to play the instrument since mid-2024 and has already spent a good chunk of change on them, from an apple-red beginner’s Danelectro to a $3,500 Gibson classic acoustic. When she strums and sings, it’s clear she has a way to go before she is proficient.
But get this: Scrupski already has four self-produced country albums under her belt, all available on major streaming platforms. Her tunes sound polished and confident, the lyrics leaning into the “country noir” genre populated by names like Gillian Welch, the legendary Johnny Cash or the Drive-By Truckers, while the music is more country pop or rock.
How has a 66-year-old grandmother and serial entrepreneur, once named by a top business magazine as one of the most innovative women in tech, pulled this off?
From poetry to playlists
The words to Scrupski’s songs are all hers, drawn from a collection of poems she’s written across several decades — odes to lovers, tales of wins and losses, and the exorcising of the demons of domestic abuse. But the music comes via artificial intelligence, honed and tweaked by detailed prompts Scrupski punches into a music-generating website called Suno — a startup with a $2.45 billion valuation based on a recent $250 million funding round, and which is also the target of lawsuits filed by major recording labels. More on that later…