User Guide

Welcome

You do not need an account, an API key or any setup. Paste a lyric, press one button, and you get a professional songwriter's review. Everything else in this guide is optional depth.

There are two levels. Quick is the whole product for most people: review a song, or write one. Songwriter Studio adds the workshop — versions, rewriting, a co-writer chat, project management and the tools for preparing a song for Suno.

They are not two applications. It is one song, seen two ways. Switching between them never loses your work.

What VerseWorthy does — and does not do

It does

• Review a lyric the way a publisher or co-writer would, with a verdict, a score, and three concrete priorities.
• Point out where the writing turns generic, and just as importantly, name the lines worth protecting.
• Write a new lyric from a story briefing you supply.
• Rewrite or polish an existing lyric while preserving your voice.
• Prepare lyrics, a style description and exclusions for Suno.

It does not

• Detect whether a lyric was written by AI. Nobody can do that reliably from text, and VerseWorthy does not pretend to. What it measures is whether the writing is formulaic. That is a craft judgement, not an accusation.
• Act as a grammar checker. Fragments, dropped words and conversational speech are normal in lyrics and are left alone.
• Police clichés. Country has a shared vocabulary. A word is not a fault.
• Check for plagiarism or clear copyright. See Your lyrics & copyright.
• Generate music. VerseWorthy prepares the words and the instructions; Suno makes the audio.

Quick mode

Quick opens by default and has two tabs: Review a song and Write a new song. It shows only what you need. The technical controls are not missing — they live in Songwriter Studio, and your song carries over untouched when you go there.

Reviewing a song

1. Enter the title if the song has one. Optional, but the reviewer checks whether your title actually lands in the chorus.
2. Enter the writer name if you want it in the report. Optional.
3. Choose the country style you are aiming for. This matters more than it looks: an Appalachian murder ballad should not be judged by modern radio conventions.
4. Paste your lyrics. Section tags like [Verse 1] and [Chorus] help but are not required.
5. Pick the review language — English or Dutch. This changes the report, never your lyrics.
6. Press Review my lyrics and give it half a minute.

You get a verdict, a songwriter score, two risk indicators, a one-sentence summary of what your song is actually about, short assessments of storytelling and hook, exactly three revision priorities, and the lines you should protect. View full review expands the complete report — no second request, no extra wait.

Writing a new song

The quality of what comes back depends almost entirely on the briefing. "Write a sad country song" produces exactly what you would expect: something that could be about anyone. One specific true detail changes everything.

What is the song about?

One or two sentences. A situation, not a theme. Not "loss" but what happened, to whom, and what was left behind.

Who is telling the story?

First person, first person addressing someone, a third-person narrator, or a shared "we". This decides the whole voice of the lyric.

Setting

Optional. A kitchen table, a farmyard, a hospital corridor. Somewhere the song can physically happen.

Must-have detail

Optional, and the most powerful field on the page. One concrete object or moment that has to appear. It forces the lyric out of abstraction.

Title or hook idea

Optional. Leave it blank and one will be invented.

Country style and lyrics language

The subgenre to write toward, and whether the lyric itself should be English or Dutch. Lyrics language and review language are separate settings.

An example briefing

Afterwards you can review the result, ask for a small revision, copy the lyrics, or continue in Studio. The generated song becomes your current song everywhere in VerseWorthy, so nothing needs re-pasting.

Understanding your review

Songwriter score

A single figure out of 100 expressing the reviewer's overall judgement of the writing. It is deliberately not generous: a 90 is meant to be rare. Roughly, below 60 means there are real structural problems; 60 to 70 means an interesting idea with clear issues; 70 to 80 means a good song that editing would visibly improve; above 80 means it is close to finished.

The most useful way to read it is as a comparison between your own drafts, not against other writers. A score that moves from 64 to 73 after a rewrite is telling you something. A score of 73 by itself is telling you very little.

AI-slop risk

Low, Moderate or High. This describes how formulaic the writing is. It says nothing about who or what wrote it.

Formulaic writing has recognisable habits: several abstract atmosphere words stacked together; metaphors that jump from storm to highway to flame in three lines; a second verse restating the first with different scenery; phrasing that exists to complete a rhyme; and lines that sound meaningful until you ask what they actually say.

Individual words are never the problem. Consider the difference between a father's ashes scattered past a boat ramp — concrete, necessary, specific — and ashes of broken dreams beside whispers echoing through a soul. Same word, two different pieces of writing. VerseWorthy is built to tell those apart, and its local scanner deliberately does not penalise a word on its own.

Cliché risk

Also Low, Moderate or High, and it works on four levels.

Whiskey by itself is not a cliché. Someone ordering whiskey is neutral. An untouched whiskey leaving a wet ring beside signed divorce papers is specific and story-driven. Whiskey nights under neon lights mending a broken heart is a cluster.

Keepers

Two to five lines or elements the reviewer thinks you should protect, each with a short reason. They appear in a green panel in Quick and in Studio.

This exists because an editing tool that only finds faults will slowly sand the character off your writing. Keepers are the counterweight. When you use Rewrite or Polish, anything marked as a keeper is left exactly as it is.

Top 3 revisions

Exactly three, ordered by impact. Not twenty equally weighted complaints. A weak second verse or a chorus that does not pay off always outranks a smoother verb.

If you only have an hour, do these three and stop.

Storytelling and verse 2 progression

The storytelling note covers point of view, tense, chronology and whether anything actually changes across the song. Scenery alone is not a story.

Verse 2 progression is rated Strong, Partial, Repeats Verse 1, or Not Applicable. The test behind it is simple: what do I know after this verse that I did not know before it? A second verse should bring new information, a consequence, an escalation, another moment in time, a reveal, or a changed understanding. Restating verse one with a different backdrop is one of the most common weaknesses in an otherwise good song.

Hook and chorus

Whether the title creates curiosity, whether the verses lead toward the hook, and whether the payoff lands when the title finally arrives. A chorus may be more universal than the verses — that is its job — but the verses have to earn that universality first.

Songwriter Studio

Studio is the workshop. Everything from Quick is still there, plus the tools you need when a song goes through several drafts. Switch with the toggle at the top; your song, title, writer, style and completed review all come with you.

Song setup, intention and styles

The Song panel holds title, writer, date and an optional reference number — useful if you are handling submissions from several people. All of it ends up in the exported files.

Song intention

Storytelling, Commercial / Radio, Traditional, Personal, Historical / True Story, Humorous, Dark Narrative, Simple Singalong, or Other. This is passed to the reviewer so it knows what you were aiming for. Without it, nothing assumes commercial radio conventions — a personal song written for one family is not a failed single.

Country styles

The subgenre list covers traditional, classic, honky-tonk, outlaw, neo-traditional, 90s, contemporary, country pop, country rock, southern rock, Americana, alt-country, Red Dirt, Texas, western and cowboy, bluegrass, Appalachian old-time, Appalachian folk, Southern Gothic, country folk and country ballad. Choosing one changes both how the song is judged and the musical defaults used for Suno.

Must keep / do not change

A free-text field for anything you refuse to have touched. For example: keep the title, the last line of the chorus, and the tractor keys detail.

It is passed to the reviewer, the rewriter, Polish and the co-writer chat as protected material. Use it whenever a song has a line that came from real life — those are exactly the lines an editor is most tempted to smooth out.

Co-writer

A conversation about the lyric currently in the Song panel. It knows your song, your style description and your most recent review, so you never need to paste anything or explain the context.

Ask for what you actually want: three alternatives for one line, a stronger chorus with the same story, or where the weakest writing is. Answers show the original next to the suggestion so you can see the difference. If it gives you a complete new version of the song, a button appears to move it into the Song panel — with your previous version kept.

Rewrite

Available once a review exists, and highlighted when the reviewer recommends it. It follows the report rather than its own taste: what the report marks as critical gets changed, what it marks as optional gets changed only where it does not damage your voice, and keepers are left alone.

It deliberately does not convert every abstraction into a physical image. A directly stated emotion can be the best line in a song when it is earned. Afterwards you see a list of what changed and why, and Undo rewrite puts your original back in one click.

Polish

Polish works from the local scanner rather than from a review. The scanner flags possible issues — watch words, stock phrases, formulaic constructions, low concreteness — and the editor then judges each one in context, changes only what is genuinely weak, and reports which flags it dismissed and why.

Versions and comparing them

A version is recorded automatically whenever the song changes — your first analysis, before and after a rewrite, a chat version, a newly written song — and you can take a snapshot yourself at any point. Twelve are kept.

The comparison panel puts two versions side by side: the score movement at the top, then a line-by-line difference with removals in pink and additions in green. This is how you find out whether a rewrite actually helped, rather than assuming it did.

Projects, backup and downloads

Save a song as a project and it appears in the Submissions overview with its scores and a status — new, reviewed, approved, rejected, aired — which you can sort and change. Handy when you are running a competition or a release schedule.

Two downloads are available: Lyrics (.txt) gives a clean file with title, writer and date in the header, and Full dossier (.txt) adds the style description, exclusions, settings and the review report.

Fact check

Runs two passes. A free regional check in your browser compares place names against region-specific vocabulary — it will notice, for instance, that caliche belongs to west Texas and New Mexico rather than Oklahoma, where the soil is red dirt. Then a full check looks at plants, soil, weather, crops, tools, distances, road numbers and anachronisms.

It distinguishes between a confirmed internal inconsistency, a likely factual problem, and something merely worth checking, and it is instructed not to invent a correction when it is unsure. A wrong specific detail is worse than a vague one: it tells the listener you were never there.

Distinctive-line search

Picks the most distinctive line in your lyric — the one with the rarest word combination, so not your chorus — and opens a web search for it in quotes. Two seconds of work to see whether that line already exists somewhere.

This is a sanity check, not a plagiarism service. It uses no AI and costs nothing.

Using VerseWorthy with Suno

Suno's Custom Mode takes your material in separate fields. VerseWorthy prepares each of them.

Section tags

Tags in square brackets tell Suno where each section starts. VerseWorthy adds them if your lyric has none, numbers your verses, and detects your chorus from repetition.

What works reliably

Put each tag on its own line, directly above the section it applies to. Capitalisation does not matter. Stick to established tags — [Intro], [Verse 1], [Pre-Chorus], [Chorus], [Bridge], [Guitar Solo], [Instrumental Break], [Outro] and similar. VerseWorthy marks less reliable ones in its tag bar so you can see which are which.

Things that catch people out

• Round brackets get sung. They are for short backing phrases of one to three words. A production note in round brackets may be sung aloud as lyrics.
• Invented tags are generally ignored or, worse, sung.
• Repeat markers like (x2) are unreliable. Write the line out twice instead. VerseWorthy removes them automatically.
• Stacking many tags on one line gives competing instructions. Two or three is plenty.
• Explanatory lines left in the lyric field tend to get sung. VerseWorthy flags them.

On length: the lyrics field accepts a lot, but somewhere around 3,000 characters is the practical ceiling before a generation starts rushing or shortening sections. For a three to four minute song, aim for roughly 30 to 40 lines. VerseWorthy's character counter turns amber and then pink as you approach the limits.

Style description

VerseWorthy builds this from your genre, tempo, rhythmic feel, instruments, voice, mood and production, in that order, and shows a live character count. Order matters: earlier terms carry more weight, so genre and tempo go first and exclusions last.

How many elements

Advice from experienced users varies between roughly four and twelve. What everyone agrees on is the shape of the failure at either end: with too few, the generator fills the gaps with its own defaults; with too many, the terms start competing and you get a compromise on all of them. VerseWorthy warns outside four to ten.

Things that fail silently

• Artist names are handled unreliably and may be filtered. Describe what you hear in that sound instead.
• Mixing jargon is not interpreted. Say warm, dry, or space around the vocal.
• Square brackets do not belong in this field.
• BPM is guidance rather than a metronome setting.

VerseWorthy checks for all four and tells you.

Exclude styles

The dedicated field for what you do not want. Keep it to three to five specific things.

Two points worth knowing. Exclusion is direction, not a mute button — a generation may still contain a related sound, especially if your positive style implies it. And removing an element leaves an empty musical role, so pair every exclusion with a positive replacement. Excluding guitar is weak; excluding guitar while asking for a piano-led arrangement is strong.

Negative phrasing inside the style field itself works only partially. Simple exclusions like no drums or no vocals tend to be respected; vaguer negatives are weaker than a positive replacement.

BPM and rhythmic feel

Country sits roughly between 80 and 120 BPM. Ballads run slower, around 60 to 82; classic country around 90 to 120; modern radio country 100 to 125; country rock 118 to 145; bluegrass 135 to 180. VerseWorthy shows the usual range for your chosen genre and colours the field when you go outside it.

Instruments, voice and production

Instrumentation is what makes a genre actually land — two to four named instruments steer more sharply than a crowd of them. The vocal setting offers male, female, duet or instrumental, and the voice character list adapts so you cannot build a contradictory combination.

If you choose a duet, put [Male Vocal] and [Female Vocal] above the sections that change singer, or the split gets decided for you. VerseWorthy warns when a tag in your lyric contradicts your vocal setting.

Style influence and weirdness

Suno's Creative Sliders sit in Custom Mode. VerseWorthy suggests values per genre; they are starting points, not settings to copy blindly.

Style influence controls how literally your style field is taken. High only pays off when your field is lean and precise; a vague description on a strict setting mostly produces noise.

Weirdness is how far the generation may stray from genre norms. For songs you intend to keep, staying below roughly half is the usual advice.

There is no universally correct pair of numbers. Change one thing at a time and compare, otherwise you will not know what helped.

Copying your song to Suno

1. Finish or review your lyrics in VerseWorthy.
2. Open Songwriter Studio.
3. Press Prepare for Suno and check the section structure in the Structure panel.
4. Read the findings — tag problems, length warnings and vocal conflicts show up here.
5. Check the generated style description and its character count.
6. Check the exclude field.
7. Copy the Lyrics field and paste it into Suno's lyrics field.
8. Copy the style description and paste it into Suno's style field.
9. Copy exclude styles into Suno's exclude field under Advanced Options.
10. Set the sliders to the suggested values.
11. Generate, and listen critically.
12. Come back to VerseWorthy to revise the lyric or the instructions.
13. When troubleshooting, change one major variable at a time.

Suno's interface changes from time to time; if a field name here does not match what you see, look for the equivalent in Custom Mode.

Common Suno problems

It sang one of my instructions

Almost always round brackets, or an explanatory line left in the lyrics field. Both are flagged in the findings.

It ignored an instrument

Usually too many competing elements in the style field, or the instrument sits too late in it. Cut the weakest terms and move the one that matters earlier.

The chorus is different every time

Choruses repeat more reliably when they are word-for-word identical and clearly tagged. Slight variation invites more variation.

It ignored my exclusion

Exclusion is guidance. Pair it with a positive replacement, and check that your style field is not implying the thing you excluded.

The result sounds generic

Often the lyric rather than the settings. Run a review and look at the concreteness figure.

Craft notes

Using AI without losing your voice

The risk with any writing tool is not that it makes your song worse. It is that it makes your song like everyone else's — smoother, tidier, more competent, less yours. Three habits protect against that.

• Use the Must keep field. Anything that came from real life goes in there before you press rewrite.
• Take suggestions selectively. A rewrite is a draft, not a verdict. Undo exists for a reason, and version comparison shows you exactly what was traded away.
• Distrust improvements you cannot explain. If a new line is technically better but you cannot say why you prefer it, you probably do not.

Where specificity comes from

The single most reliable improvement to a country lyric is replacing something general with something you could photograph. Not "your old car" but the make and the year. Not "I miss you" but what is still sitting where you left it. The reviewer's concreteness figure measures roughly this — but only as a signal. A song can be entirely concrete and still say nothing.

When a cliché is the right choice

Country has a shared vocabulary, and using it is not a failure. A familiar image with an unfamiliar angle is often stronger than an invented one. The question is never whether a word is common — it is whether anyone else could have written that line.

Privacy

Local analysis

The pre-screen, the meters, the regional check, the structure detection and the distinctive-line search all run inside your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere for those.

AI features

When you request a review, a new song, a rewrite, a polish, a co-writer reply or a fact check, the text needed for that request is sent to VerseWorthy's server and on to the AI provider for processing. There is no way to run those features without sending the text. VerseWorthy does not store your lyrics on the server.

Project storage

Projects, versions and settings are stored in your own browser on the device you are using — not in an account and not on the server. That means they are private to your device, and also that they disappear if you clear your site data. Make a backup.

Your lyrics and copyright

• Your lyrics remain yours. VerseWorthy claims no ownership of anything you submit for review.
• Verify AI-assisted material before commercial release. That is your responsibility, not the tool's.
• Uniqueness is not guaranteed. A generated suggestion may resemble existing work. The distinctive-line search helps you spot the obvious cases; it is not exhaustive.
• VerseWorthy is not a copyright-clearance service and does not check whether your song infringes anything.
• AI-slop risk is not an authorship detector. It never states that a lyric was written by AI, and it should never be used to accuse anyone of that.
• Rules for AI-assisted work vary by country, by platform and by rights organisation, and they are changing. Check the current requirements wherever you intend to release.

The full AI & Copyright Notice, Terms of Service and Privacy Policy take precedence over this summary.

Accounts and credits

You need an account, and it takes a moment: an email address and a password. New accounts get five free credits, no card needed.

One credit is spent per AI action — a review, a generated song, a rewrite, a polish, a fact check, or a co-writer reply. Everything that runs in your browser is free and unlimited: the pre-screen, the meters, structure detection, exports, projects and the distinctive-line search.

If an action fails, the credit comes back automatically. You never pay for an answer you did not get.

When you run out, a panel offers credit packs. Credits never expire, there is no subscription, and nothing renews or is charged automatically. Current prices are shown in that panel rather than here, so this guide cannot go out of date the moment they change.

Payment goes through Stripe. We never see your card details. Because credits are delivered immediately, you are asked before paying to confirm that you want them straight away and understand that the right of withdrawal then no longer applies — see the Withdrawal & Cancellation Policy for what that means in practice.

Deleting your account

There is a Delete account link beside your name at the top. It removes your email address, your balance and your credit history for good, and it cannot be undone. Any credits you still hold are lost.

Two things it does not touch: projects saved in your own browser, which are yours to clear, and the financial record of any purchase, which Dutch tax law requires us to keep for seven years — stripped of anything identifying you.

Compatibility

VerseWorthy songwriting tools

Lyric review, storytelling analysis, rewriting, polishing, version comparison and the co-writer are not tied to any music-generation service. They work on words. You can use them for a song you intend to record with a band, or never record at all.

Suno integration

The generator-specific parts — section tag formatting, style description, exclude styles, tempo and slider suggestions — are designed for Suno.

Other AI music generators

VerseWorthy does not guarantee correct formatting or compatibility with any other AI music generator. Other services may use different prompt systems, section syntax, negative prompting, style fields, character limits and model behaviour. You are welcome to experiment, but Suno-formatted output is not promised to work elsewhere, and support cannot be offered for it.

If compatibility with another platform is tested and added later, it will be documented here.

Troubleshooting

Why did my score go down after a rewrite?

The reviewer sees a different song now. A rewrite that fixes one problem can expose another, and scores are judgements rather than measurements, so small movements are noise. Use version comparison to see what actually changed, and trust your ear over the figure.

Why is a word like "whiskey" highlighted?

Highlighting is not an accusation. Genre language is shown separately and explicitly does not count against you. It is there so you can ask yourself one question: have I done anything of my own with it?

Why does it say my verse 2 repeats verse 1?

Because it could not find new information, a consequence or a change of understanding — only the same emotion in new scenery. Give verse 2 an event.

Why did Suno sing an instruction?

Round brackets are sung. So are stray explanatory lines. Move production notes into square brackets on their own line, or remove them.

Why doesn't the BPM sound as fast as I set?

Set a rhythmic feel. See BPM and rhythmic feel.

Why did VerseWorthy protect a line as a keeper?

Because it does something the rest of the song does not: a specific human detail, a strong character voice, or a line carrying story and emotion at once. You can override it — keepers are advice, not a lock.

Why can't I use another AI music generator?

You can use the lyrics anywhere. It is the Suno-specific formatting that is not guaranteed to translate. See Compatibility.

What happens if I reach the usage limit?

AI features pause for a while. Your song, versions and projects are untouched, and everything local keeps working.

An AI request failed. What now?

Try again — most failures are temporary. If it keeps failing, the message shown will say whether it is a busy service, a configuration problem on the server, or a connection issue on your side.

My projects are gone

Projects are stored per browser and per domain. Clearing site data removes them, and a different device or browser shows a different set. Restore from a backup file if you have one, and make backups from now on.

Frequently asked questions

Does VerseWorthy write the song for me?

It can write a complete lyric from your briefing, and it can review or rewrite one you wrote yourself. Most people use it for the second, which is what it is best at.

Can I use it for lyrics I wrote myself?

Yes, and that is the main use. Nothing is changed unless you ask for a rewrite or a polish.

Does it detect whether lyrics were written by AI?

No, and it never claims to. AI-slop risk describes how formulaic the writing is, nothing more. No tool can reliably determine authorship from text.

Does VerseWorthy own my lyrics?

No. They remain entirely yours.

Can I commercially release a song made with VerseWorthy?

That depends on your own situation, on where you release, and on the terms of any generation service you used. VerseWorthy does not grant or withhold those rights and cannot advise on them. Check the rules that apply to you.

Does it guarantee copyright protection?

No. It is not a copyright-clearance service.

Is VerseWorthy part of Suno?

No. It is independent, and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Suno.

Is it compatible with Suno?

The formatting tools are built for Suno. Suno may change its behaviour without notice, so check the result rather than assuming perfect compliance.

Does it work with other AI music generators?

The lyric tools do, since they only deal with words. The generator-specific formatting is not guaranteed to work elsewhere.

Why does it allow common country words?

Because country music has a shared vocabulary and always has. Penalising a word for being familiar would push every song toward the same bloodless middle.

Can a cliché sometimes be good?

Yes. A familiar image with a fresh angle is often the strongest line in a song. Stacking familiar images with nothing happening between them is the actual problem.

Should I follow every suggested rewrite?

No. Take what makes the song more itself and leave the rest. That is what a co-writer is for.

What is a keeper?

A line worth protecting. See Keepers.

Why does verse 2 matter so much?

Because it is where most songs quietly stop moving. See Verse 2 progression.

Can I write in Dutch?

Yes. Lyrics language and review language are separate settings, so you can write in Dutch and read the report in English, or the other way round.

Contact

For questions, problems or suggestions about VerseWorthy, use the contact details published on the site you are using. When reporting a problem, it helps enormously to include what you pressed, what you expected, and the exact message you saw.

Support covers VerseWorthy itself. Questions about Suno's behaviour, pricing or account issues belong with Suno.