AI Hits Number One on Music Charts Should AI Be Allowed to Make Music? By Howard Bloom

This week a surprising song with a surprising origin soared to number one on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart. It was “Walk My Walk” by Breaking Rust.  “Walk My Walk” was a distinctive song with a powerful sound and quintessentially country lyrics.  And Breaking Rust’s EP, Resilient, had five songs of persistence and pride, remaining true to yourself through crushing circumstances and coming out with your head held high.

But the musical group Breaking Rust does not exist.  Nor does its massively powerful vocalist.  The French news agency Agence France-Presse did a deep dive into the song’s origins and found that all evidence indicates that “Walk My Walk” and the performance of it are generated by Artificial Intelligence.  Using music-generation AI tools that are only two years old.

Jason Palamara, assistant professor of music technology at Indiana University, looks down on “Walk My Walk” as “obviously the product of AI” due to its “tech heavy production” and “lack of sincerity.”  I disagree.  The conviction and sincerity in the songs on Breaking Rust’s EP Resilient have remarkable conviction and all the intense emotion of Chris Stapleton.  Which means that AI can generate emotional power and rhythmic force.

But should AI be allowed to make music?

I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry to hear new songs.  And new styles.  Even though 800,000 new songs are uploaded to streaming platforms every week.  I need the new music being produced by artificial intelligence.  You may need it, too.

What’s more, human music is more machine-like than we think.

Six hundred years ago, in 1397, musicians had to pluck the stretched strings of harps with their fingers.  Which ripped the skin of their fingertips to shreds.  Then came the harpsichord and plucked the notes for us. Three hundred years later came another machine, one that replaced strings of gut and horsehair with high-tension strings of steel. A machine that hit those strings with hammers.  The piano.  Was music impoverished by the invasion of these machines?  Without the piano, composers like Beethoven and Mozart could not have dreamed their grand musical soundscapes.  But today’s tech haters would have almost certainly called for legislation to limit the use of machines in music making.

In 1970 music was invaded by another machine, a product of the early computer: the synthesizer. The synthesizer could give you the sound of a Steinway baby grand in Carnegie hall, the sound of a hundred-singer chorus, or sounds that no one had ever heard before. Electronically.  Now the dreams of composers like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, the Moody Blues, Stevie Wonder, and Vangelis could grow even grander.

In 1973, I mounted a scientific expedition into a field I knew nothing about, pop culture.  And a few years later I founded what became the biggest PR firm in the industry.  Which meant that back in 1978, I was working with one of the greatest percussionists in music history, Ralph Macdonald.  The New York Times called Ralph “the ghost behind the million-selling albums.” It was said that on any given week, Ralph played on two of the songs in the top five and on ten of the albums in the jazz top twenty. What’s more, Ralph wrote the hit songs “Just the Two of Us” and “Where Is the Love”.  And he performed his composition “Calypso Breakdown” on the Saturday Night Fever album.

Ralph had a habit of turning almost anything he saw into a sound he could use.  He transformed trash into rhythm instruments, from beer bottles to hollow plastic toy ducks. In 1978, a new invention hit the music scene, a new robot making rhythm.  It was called the Syndrum.  Was Ralph afraid it would replace him?  No, he embraced it.  It sat in one corner of his office where he could use it whenever an idea struck.  And like his toy ducks and bottles, the Syndrum expanded what he could do.

Ten years later every musician in sight would have a closely-related gadget, a drum machine.  The drum machine suggested rhythms that my clients Prince and Phil Collins could use to trigger their own creativity. Not to mention Madonna.  Today musicians use a drum machine as one of their basic tools.  The way that the piano and the synthesizer were once brand new tools.

Let AI do its thing.  And it will raise us to new levels of creativity.

_________

About the author: Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. Bloom’s new book is The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong. Says Harvard’s Ellen Langer of The Case of the Sexual Cosmos, Bloom “argues that we are not savaging the earth as some would have it, but instead are growing the cosmos. A fascinating read.” One of Bloom’s eight previous books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT.  Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. Not to mention in scientific journals like Biosystems, New Ideas in Psychology, and PhysicaPlus. Says Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution’s End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, “I have finished Howard Bloom’s [first two] books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment.  I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom’s on the planet.”   For more, see http://howardbloom.net or http://howardbloom.institute

______

References:

Breaking Rust. “Walk My Walk #musictok #countrymusic #country #soul #blues.” YouTube, November 2025. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JDjCB9V6KMI.

Billboard. “AI-Generated Country Artist Breaking Rust Tops Digital Song Sales Chart.” *Billboard*, November 2025. https://www.billboard.com.

Agence France-Presse. 2025. “Un groupe de country 100 % IA en tête des ventes américaines, une première.” November 8, 2025. https://www.afp.com/fr/infos/335/un-groupe-de-country-100-ia-en-tete-des-ventes-americaines-une-premiere-doc-3t28v1.

TechCrunch. “Suno and Udio Are Reinventing Music Creation with AI.” *TechCrunch*, August 2024. https://www.techcrunch.com.

MIT Technology Review. “Transformer Models Are Changing the Sound of Music.” *MIT Technology Review*, May 2023. https://www.technologyreview.com.

The Verge. “Virtual Artists Like Yona and Noonoouri Are Blurring the Line Between Human and AI.” *The Verge*, October 2024. https://www.theverge.com.

Nature Machine Intelligence. “Neural Audio Synthesis with Transformer Architectures.” *Nature Machine Intelligence* 5, no. 3 (2023): 210–225. https://www.nature.com/natmachintell.

Eurweb. “AI-Created Artist Breaking Rust Tops U.S. Country Chart.” *Eurweb*, November 12, 2025. https://eurweb.com.

Billboard. “AI-Generated Country Artist Breaking Rust Hits No. 1 on Digital Song Sales.” *Billboard*, November 2025. https://www.billboard.com.

TechCrunch. “Suno and Udio Are Reinventing Music Creation with AI.” *TechCrunch*, August 2024. https://www.techcrunch.com.

MIT Technology Review. “Transformer Models Are Changing the Sound of Music.” *MIT Technology Review*, May 2023. https://www.technologyreview.com.

The Verge. “Virtual Artists Like Yona and Noonoouri Are Blurring the Line Between Human and AI.” *The Verge*, October 2024. https://www.theverge.com.

Nature Machine Intelligence. “Neural Audio Synthesis with Transformer Architectures.” *Nature Machine Intelligence* 5, no. 3 (2023): 210–225.https://www.nature.com/natmachintell.

Good, Edwin M. *Giraffes, Black Dragons, and Other Pianos: A Technological History from Cristofori to the Modern Concert Grand*. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Pollens, Stewart. *The Early Pianoforte*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Britannica. “Harpsichord.” *Encyclopædia Britannica*. Accessed November 12, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/art/harpsichord.

Yamaha Corporation. “The Story of the Piano’s Invention.” *Yamaha Musical Instrument Guide*. Accessed November 12, 2025.https://www.yamaha.com/en/musical_instrument_guide/piano/structure/.

Billboard Staff. 2025. “Country Digital Song Sales.” Chart dated November 15, 2025. https://www.billboard.com/charts/country-digital-song-sales/2025-11-15/.

DistroKid. 2025. “2025 Mid-Year Independent Artist Report.” July 2025. https://distrokid.com/reports/2025-midyear.

Friedman, Wayne. 2025. “AI-Generated ‘Breaking Rust’ Tops Billboard Country Chart, Sparking Outrage.” Rolling Stone, November 10, 2025.https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/ai-country-song-breaking-rust-billboard-1235159872/.

Holt, Lester. 2025. “NBC Nightly News: Fake Country Star or Future of Music?” Aired November 11, 2025. YouTube video, 2:14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY7kL9pQd2s.

Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. 2025. “Faculty Quote: Jason Palamara on AI Country Hit.” November 9, 2025. https://music.indiana.edu/news-events/news/palamara-ai-country.html.

Li, Xiaomeng, and Mark Savage. 2025. “The AI Country Song That Fooled America.” BBC News, November 11, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-69876543.

McPherson, David. 2025. “Breaking Rust’s ‘Walk My Walk’ Is Soulless Algorithmic Slop—and It Just Hit #1.” Whiskey Riff, November 9, 2025.https://www.whiskeyriff.com/2025/11/09/breaking-rust-walk-my-walk-ai-country/.

Saving Country Music (Trigger). 2025. “100 % AI Act ‘Breaking Rust’ Debuts at #1 on Billboard Country Sales—This Is the Dystopian Future We Warned About.” November 8, 2025. https://savingcountrymusic.com/100-ai-act-breaking-rust-debuts-at-1-on-billboard-country-sales/.

Spotify for Artists. 2025. “Breaking Rust – Resilient EP.” Released October 31, 2025. https://open.spotify.com/album/4KfG3N2jXz7pL9s5mQ2w1.

Trigaux, Robert. 2025. “An AI ‘Band’ Just Outsold Every Human Country Artist This Week.” Tampa Bay Times, November 10, 2025. https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/music/2025/11/10/ai-band-breaking-rust-country-chart/.

Westerville, Mark. 2025. “Suno, Udio, and the Anonymous Creator Behind Breaking Rust.” Music Business Worldwide, November 11, 2025.https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/suno-udio-and-the-anonymous-creator-behind-breaking-rust/.

Whiskey Riff Podcast. 2025. “Episode 312: The AI Country Invasion with Special Guest Jason Palamara.” November 11, 2025.https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-312/id1502845869?i=1000687654321.

Zimmerman, Amy. 2025. “Country Music’s First Fully AI #1 Is Here—and Fans Are Livid.” The Daily Beast, November 10, 2025. https://www.thedailybeast.com/country-musics-first-fully-ai-number-one-is-here-and-fans-are-livid/.

Kozinn, Allan. 2011. “Ralph MacDonald, Pop Percussionist, Dies at 67.” New York Times, December 21, 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/arts/music/ralph-macdonald-pop-percussionist-dies-at-67.html.

Margalit Fox. “Ralph MacDonald, Pop Percussionist, Dies at 67.” New York Times, December 20, 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/arts/music/ralph-macdonald-pop-percussionist-dies-at-67.html