Let me be clear about one thing upfront: I never set out to be a pop star.

Fantasised about it, yes. Usually somewhere between my tenth beer and the closing credits of The Commitments. But I’ve never had the cheekbones, the hair, or the pelvic thrust for it. I’m an ad copywriter. Have been for 40-odd years. My job has always been to write for others. BMW’s “mouse on the (power) steering wheel” commercial, Dell, Breweries, FHM, banks, you get the picture.

But in my head, there were always songs.

Proper ones. With meaning. With intent. That rhymed. With words that I wanted to punch you in the gut, or grab you by the balls, or whisper into your ear at 2am when the world felt a bit too quiet.

I started writing them in my teens — scribbled on notepads, typed out on my clunky Olivetti, stored on floppies, lost, found again, polished, rewritten, sung in my head while driving or in the shower or staring out of a window like some wannabe Leonard Cohen.

Only problem? No one wanted to sing them.

And my singing voice? Let’s just say Springsteen’s got nothing to worry about. Hell, not even the bloke who sings backup vocals at the Plumstead pub on Friday karaoke night.

You’d think after decades in the creative industry, I’d have a Rolodex of soulful crooners, smoky baritones, tortured indie darlings, or ex-Idols’ contestants willing to lend their pipes to a verse or two.

Nope. Not a one.

I’d send lyrics. They’d reply politely. “Nice stuff, KK… but it’s not really my style.” Which is muso-speak for “Don’t give up your day job, boetie.”

No. I lie, once roped in my friend Tony Ndoro, a top bloke with connections, to ask his musician friend John (surname lost to time) if he’d take a crack at a song I’d written for my son. A personal one. Close to the heart. John said yes, eventually sent something back… and I wish I could say it was beautiful. But no. It sounded like he’d recorded it underwater, in a cupboard, during a power outage. I couldn’t make out a single word, half the lyrics were missing and the emotional bit, the part that mattered, had been replaced with what I can only describe as jazz-adjacent mumbling. So, I never played it for anyone. And my 100% record of songs-never-heard remained unbroken.

I couldn’t blame them. My songs weren’t fashionable. They were structured. Thoughtful. They had lyrics – you know, those things we used to care about before every chart hit turned into a hormonal diary entry over a rap beat.

So, the songs sat. And waited. As I aged. Like wine. Or milk. Depending on how you look at it.

And that was it. I was hooked. I realised this weird, wonderful AI had solved the one problem I hadn’t been able to. Someone to sing my songs. So, I got busy. I fed it lyric after lyric. Some protest, some poetic. Some bleak, some wry. Songs about truth. About loss. About the sheer absurdity of being human in a world increasingly run by algorithms and ego.

Not every attempt was gold – sometimes Suno decided my aching ballads needed synth pop, or that my gentle lament needed a ska trumpet – but when it clicked, it really clicked for me. So much so, I did what any emotionally unprepared, slightly grumpy, wannabe Dylan does when something momentous happens: I made an album. It’s called “It’s About Time.”

Why “It’s About Time”? Because it took me fifty years and one semi-sentient robot to finally bring my lyrics to life. It’s also a sardonic nod to the fact that I’ve been threatening to do this for decades, much like fixing the garage door, learning to cook, or being kind to strangers.

Seven tracks to date. Some I think are quite good. One cuts off before it ends (user error – my bad.) A couple of protest songs, ballads, a dash of blues. Some surprisingly hopeful. Others that aren’t. In short: the musings of someone who’s experienced seven decades of living on this crazy planet and still believes in music.