A fully artificial country track has made history by becoming the first AI-generated song to hit No. 1 on a Billboard chart, with “Walk My Walk” by the virtual performer Breaking Rust claiming the peak position on the Country Digital Song Sales list this week.
The song, which draws on an outlaw country style with a deep, guttural drawl over a sparse instrumental, echoes the sound of Colter Wall’s “Sleeping on the Blacktop.” It surfaced on Instagram in mid-October, paired with AI-crafted clips showing solitary cowboys and vast roadways, before exploding in popularity with millions of streams across Spotify and similar sites.
Credited to Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor — a figure who remains largely unknown online and could potentially be an AI-generated persona himself — the release forms part of the Resilient EP. Taylor oversees another AI venture, Defbeastai, focused on risqué, satirical country tunes.
Social media snippets of “Walk My Walk” commonly feature tags like “Asking AI to make a hit country song,” emphasizing its machine-made roots. The Instagram page for Breaking Rust, which boasts over 35,000 followers, displays AI visuals portraying a weathered, hard-luck cowboy without disclosing the project’s synthetic nature.
Listeners have lauded the raspy vocals, with some unable to distinguish them from those of a human singer, and the AI figure appears to evoke emotions in audiences, despite lacking genuine emotion.
By early November, the song had garnered 1.6 million official U.S. streams, according to Billboard data. It also leads Spotify’s Viral 50 USA chart, followed at No. 2 by Breaking Rust’s “Livin’ On Borrowed Time,” a similarly raw track with a worn, dramatic feel reminiscent of Yellowstone themes.
The debut single “Livin’ On Borrowed Time” previously climbed to No. 5 on the same Billboard chart. Notably, established country stars like Zach Bryan, Lainey Wilson, and Riley Green have yet to reach the top of this sales ranking.
This breakthrough builds on earlier AI music buzz, including the viral indie rock outfit The Velvet Sundown, whose hit “Dust on the Wind” exceeded 3.5 million streams and helped the project attract more than 200,000 monthly listeners.
The rise highlights AI’s expanding presence in music, akin to past controversies over Auto-Tune’s adoption by artists such as Cher and T-Pain, which later fueled creative advances for figures like Kid Cudi, Kanye West, Travis Scott, and Post Malone.
Yet concerns linger about a potentially bleak outlook for the industry. While catchy, “Walk My Walk” carries an underlying flatness and superficial quality, lacking genuine human sentiment, which makes it hard for fans to form emotional bonds with an inhuman creator.
Human artists, who invest years honing their skills, now compete with AI outputs that may be derived from their own material. Streaming platforms like Spotify and Amazon Music are developing guidelines for such content to prevent it from dominating playlists and eroding user confidence.
Tennessee’s recent law bans deepfake imitations of real performers, though it spares originals like Breaking Rust. Still, the ongoing flood of weekly AI releases raises questions about the soulful essence of music, as timeless hits traditionally stem from personal experimentation and relatability rather than data-driven formulas.
Spotify faced backlash in July for listing AI tracks under deceased artists’ names, amplifying debates over ethics in an algorithmic era.