What the frenzy around Breaking Rust really tells us about AI music
AI is elbowing its way into nearly every corner of entertainment, and this week it sparked another skirmish. A wave of headlines claimed an AI-generated country song called Walk My Walk by the phantom “artist” Breaking Rust had become the biggest country track in the United States. It hadn’t. But the fact that so many outlets jumped on that angle tells you something important about where music, metrics, and authenticity are colliding.
Let’s break it down.
The Claim: A “No. 1 Hit” That Wasn’t
Here’s the thing: Walk My Walk did top Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, but that chart tracks a tiny universe of paid downloads. In the streaming era, that makes it more of an outlier than a bellwether.
Paid downloads have cratered so dramatically that a few thousand purchases can push almost any song to the top. Industry watchers have been calling out this vulnerability for years, and Billboard has repeatedly tweaked its methods to prevent manipulation.
In reality, the track is missing from the charts that reflect actual listening, including Spotify’s Country Top 50 and Billboard’s Country Streaming Songs. On Spotify, Walk My Walk has a few million streams, respectable, but nowhere near the volume of genuine hits by Morgan Wallen or Cody Johnson.
As Kyle Coroneos from Saving Country Music put it, “The permissiveness of Billboard with their charts has been a systemic problem for many years… Whoever is behind the single, this is exactly what they wanted.”
The Outrage Loop That Made the Song Go Viral
Even though Walk My Walk isn’t a mainstream hit, the hype around its “No. 1” status turned into fuel. People clicked to hear what the fuss was about, some to complain, others out of curiosity. That feedback loop pushed it to No. 2 on Spotify’s Viral 50 USA chart.
This kind of cycle isn’t new. But the AI angle gives it a fresh twist. A track with thin organic momentum suddenly enters the zeitgeist because it sparks a debate about authenticity, musicianship, and the future of charts.
The Bigger Picture: AI Has Already Entered the Industry’s Bloodstream
AI-generated artists have been creeping up the Billboard rankings for weeks. Major labels like Universal Music Group are openly negotiating with AI companies. And musicians, from pop stars to rock bands, are watching synthetic acts rack up streams that sometimes surpass their own.
Coroneos sums up the anxiety well: “This isn’t a year from now, this is happening right now, and it’s affecting real-life human creators.”
Inside the AI Actor Conversation: Tilly Norwood, Jon M. Chu, and a Divided Creative World
The music world isn’t alone in confronting these shifts. AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood, created by Eline Van der Velden, is stirring similar debate. She’s drawn backlash from names like Morgan Freeman and Emily Blunt, but the controversy has only made her more sought after.
Van der Velden told interviewer Harry Booth that she sees AI actors as closer to animation than human replacements. “AI is here… I like to look at the positives,” she said, noting that AI actors may even be more ethical in certain contexts.
On the other side is filmmaker Jon M. Chu, who warned that tech companies are steering creativity toward mind colonization rather than innovation. “They’re inside our curiosity,” he said. Chu’s latest project, Wicked: For Good, has already crossed $750 million globally, yet even someone at the center of Hollywood feels uneasy about where things are headed.
AI in Action: From Chart Controversies to Cyberattacks
The debate isn’t theoretical. According to a report from Anthropic, a suspected state-backed group in China used AI agents to attempt cyberattacks on roughly 30 global targets, including tech firms and government bodies. Claude Code, they wrote, was used in several attempted breaches.
“The barriers to performing sophisticated cyberattacks have dropped substantially,” Anthropic said.
What We Can Learn From the AI Music Experiment
Writers like Evan Ratliff have been documenting the chaos that unfolds when you hand tasks to AI agents. His attempt to build an app with autonomous bots resulted in everything from phantom project logs to plans for code reviews at scenic overlooks. Yet, after months of confusion, the bots still produced a working prototype.
AI music seems to be following a similar pattern: chaotic, questionable, sometimes impressive, occasionally absurd, and impossible to ignore.
Breaking Rust, for instance, shows all the signs of a manufactured persona: AI-generated cowboy imagery, no human presence, mysterious credits to Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor, and connections to another project called defbeatsai. And listeners? They’re divided. YouTube comments swing from “masterpiece” to disbelief that anyone is taking the song seriously.
Music technologist Jason Palamara isn’t buying the mystique. “It was pretty obviously the product of AI,” he told Newsweek, pointing to the compressed audio and “digital shimmer” across the vocals.
The Industry’s Response: Concern, Crackdowns, and a Push for Protection
Artists like Dua Lipa, Elton John, Kehlani, and ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus have urged for guardrails around AI and copyright. Spotify has removed tens of millions of “spammy” AI tracks. A Deezer survey found that 97 percent of listeners can’t reliably distinguish AI music from human-made work.
That’s a problem when livelihoods are at stake. A recent study warns that music workers could lose a quarter of their income to AI within just four years.
Even political leaders are weighing in. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for a “balance” to safeguard creativity, after pressure from artists such as Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, and Elton John.
Where This Leaves Us
AI music isn’t going away, and at some point a synthetic track will top a chart that genuinely reflects widespread listening. But this isn’t that moment, and Breaking Rust isn’t that artist.
The real question is what happens now, how musicians adapt, how platforms respond, and how listeners decide what authenticity means when the line between human and machine keeps getting blurrier.
If AI is going to be everywhere, human creators may have to lean even harder into what only they can do: unpredictability, story, soul, and the imperfections that make music feel alive.
