Music by Richard Gradner | The Love Songs

April 2026 – The Love Songs

Circa 1994, I started writing poetry that soon morphed into song lyrics, most of them about love. I was 23, at that dangerous stage of life where true love felt just around the corner and fame was probably one great song away.

My mate Greg and I had a ritual: meet at my bachelor flat in Sea Point before heading out, with a couple of drinks, some weed, and Paul Oakenfold on full blast. One night, somewhere between youthful delusion and chemical inspiration, I pulled out my poetry and we started singing together.

In our highly qualified state, we decided we weren’t just two okes having a laugh, we were clearly the early beginnings of an international music sensation. We gave it a proper go for a few months. Then, as with many great artistic movements fuelled by enthusiasm and questionable decision-making, it fizzled out.

I kept writing, and eventually landed 12 songs, carefully filed in a cupboard, otherwise known as almost completely forgotten for the next 30 years.

Fast forward three decades. I stumbled across a guy on Instagram using AI to remix famous singers into different genres. Fascinated, amazed, and slightly offended that a machine had more production talent than we did in 1994, I had an idea: what if I fed my old lyrics into AI?

I started experimenting with music apps and found one I liked. I plugged in the lyrics and… boom. Instant goosebumps. Also a mild existential crisis. Songs that had been gathering dust came roaring into life. What Greg and I once dreamed about in that hazy Sea Point flat had somehow become reality, minus the band, the studio, and probably several bad fashion choices.

These lyrics are a snapshot of my twenties, hopeful, dramatic, slightly lovestruck, and clearly very available, now reimagined through a whole new kind of artistry.

I’ve released the songs on Spotify and Apple Music under “Ricky Lewis” (Lewis is my middle name, and the pseudonym I created back then), with promo videos for each featuring the chorus below.

Proof that it’s never too late to dust off an old dream, hand it to AI, and finally become the rock star you were absolutely certain you’d be after three drinks and half a joint.