The New Pop Stars Are Not Human

The New Pop Stars Are Not Human

A curious moment unfolded recently when I heard a country song on Spotify during a long commute. It had the crackle of outlaw blues, the grit of a singer who had spent time in roadside bars, and the comfort of something vaguely familiar. The artist’s name read Breaking Rust, which felt believable enough. It was only when I got home, reached for the credits that the revelation hit me. The singer was not a person. The voice had no lungs behind it. The twang came from silicon.

Breaking Rust is now the most downloaded country artist in the United States on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, propelled by the single “Walk My Walk.” The track sits at number one, and another AI project, Cain Walker, holds the third position with “Don’t Tread On Me.” The pair command millions of monthly listeners, matching the audience of rising human artists who spend years refining their craft. Breaking Rust alone has 2.7 million Spotify listeners, a figure that would have once cemented a major-label signing.

It is not an isolated case. Billboard has recorded at least six AI or AI-assisted artists appearing on different charts this year. One of them is Xania Monet, a gospel and R&B vocalist that does not physically exist yet recently secured a multimillion-dollar record deal. Industry insiders admit the actual number of virtual artists could be far higher because it is becoming increasingly difficult to know who is human and who is assembled from algorithms.

This confusion was recently quantified. A survey by Deezer and Ipsos, covering eight countries and nearly nine thousand adults, found that ninety-seven percent of listeners cannot distinguish between AI-generated and human-created music. That figure carries enormous implications. When the ear can no longer tell the difference, the marketplace begins to shift. The mystique of the lone creative genius becomes porous. A teenager with a laptop can brew a synthetic voice that climbs the same charts idols once dominated.

Not everyone finds this delightful. Veteran producers call it an affront. One Nashville songwriter told a journalist that watching an algorithm eclipse people who dedicated their lives to music felt like “watching a mannequin win a marathon.”

While the global industry grapples with this metamorphosis, a small surprise emerged closer to home. Sometime last month I was introduced to Urban Chords, which I assumed was another Nigerian ensemble following the lineage of our vibrant choir tradition. Their album Choir Refix showed intricate harmonies and a confident rhythm section. I imagined rows of singers and possibly a bustling Sunday rehearsal somewhere in Surulere.

There was no choir. There was no rehearsal. There was not even a living vocalist.

Every note on Choir Refix was produced by artificial intelligence. The album dropped quietly in October 2025 and soon gained a foothold through Spotify’s smart shuffle. Then it surged. It climbed to number forty-three on the Official Top 100 Albums chart and crossed more than eight hundred thousand on-demand streams, according to Turntable Charts. Its rendition of Omah Lay’s “I’m a Mess” took on a life of its own with more than two million Spotify streams and half a million on Apple Music, thanks to TikTok’s avalanche of user-generated clips.

The speed of this rise is astonishing. Real choirs spend years perfecting tone and synchronicity. Urban Chords did not have to rest their voices, tune their instruments, or negotiate rehearsal schedules. The entire group exists as code, trained to echo the emotional timbre of gospel and Afropop without the fatigue of human labor. In a way, they represent a new aesthetic: synthetic spirituality. The timbre feels warm to the ear, yet the source is entirely artificial.

Technology does not stand still. Analysts warn that the earliest wave of AI-generated music, which many experts considered rudimentary, is already displacing human songs on influential rankings. If this is the baseline, the trajectory will only accelerate. Some fear a future where artists become curators of their own synthetic counterparts. Others imagine hybrid collaborations where a singer writes the melody while an AI builds the backing choir, strings, and harmonies in minutes. There are early experiments pointing in this direction.

What fascinates me most is the emotional ambiguity of the moment. People stream these songs because they resonate, not because they know the identity of the creator. Artificial artists can evoke nostalgia, or even melancholy even though they have never experienced any of those emotions. They can mimic the patina of human struggle without being burdened by memory or fatigue. For listeners, this raises a question about what we value. Is it the story behind the music or the sound itself?

There is no conclusive answer. What is clear is that the boundary between human and machine artistry is dissolving faster than expected. Millions already dance, work out, or pray to voices that belong to no one. They occupy playlists, rise on charts, earn royalties for their creators, and shape culture in subtle ways. Urban Chords and Breaking Rust may feel like novelties today, yet they foreshadow a world where the charts will contain an assortment of musical intelligences, organic or synthetic.