"We Are Charlie Kirk" went viral on video platforms like TikTok, and topped the Viral Songs chart on Spotify. It first spread due to its inclusion in AI-generated videos of conservative figures tearfully singing the song, uploaded by an account named ViVO Tunes on YouTube and TikTok; these videos' comment sections indicate that many believed they were real. The song was soon used in other videos as sincere tributes to Kirk, or as accompaniments to various Kirk-related memes, like "Kirkifications"—photos and videos of Kirk's face edited onto other pop cultural figures' heads—ironically responding to the sincere tributes. "We Are Charlie Kirk" has been used in over 72,000 TikTok videos.
Charlie Kirk was an American right-wing political activist and founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA. Throughout his career, he was generally popular among the American right wing, while his statements were highly controversial to his political opponents on the left and center, as well as some on the far-right.[1][2][3] On September 10, 2025, during a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Kirk was fatally wounded by a shot from a sniper rifle to his neck. A man named Tyler Robinson was arrested for the shooting.[4][5] Kirk posthumously received an outpouring of both tributes and praise from conservatives for his activism, as well as criticism over various statements of his that have been labelled bigotry.[6][7][8][9]Internet memes making fun of Kirk or his death went viral on platforms such as Twitter.[3][10][11]
Prior to Kirk's assassination, text, photos, videos, and music (both instrumental and lyrical) developed by generative artificial intelligence programs like ChatGPT had become widespread in their appearance on online platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. These AI programs have been highly criticized for causing these platforms to be filled with perceived low-quality (or "brain rot") artificial content, nicknamed "AI slop".[12][13][14][15] AI-generated music, produced by software like Suno, has been criticized for copying elements and motifs from copyrighted music made by humans, and for frequently featuring a "robotic" vocal "accent".[16][17] Since his death, on social media, Kirk has been the subject of AI-generated photo and video tributes from his supporters,[12][18] while many of the memes making fun of him are also AI-generated.[19][20][21]
Song
The full song
On September 16, 2025, six days after Kirk's assassination, a group of artist profiles on music streaming services named "Spalexma" uploaded "We Are Charlie Kirk".[22] The person or persons behind the profiles are anonymous, and do not have a social media presence. They are only known to be a project of a person or organization named "SP Music Project".[17][22] Spalexma started publishing music in May 2024.[23] "We Are Charlie Kirk" is one of many songs among their 18 Christian-themed albums so far released in 2025, all of them likely AI-generated. The song specifically was flagged by streaming service Deezer's AI music detection software as being artificially generated.[17][22][24] It was initially uploaded as the outro song to an 11-track album titled Charlie Kirk Forever Alive.[17][23]
"We Are Charlie Kirk" is a 3½ minute power ballad with stylistic similarities to the genre's output in the 1980s.[19] Between Kirk's assassination and the song's release, the titular phrase had been used as a protest slogan by his supporters.[25] The song memorializes Kirk with "loudly passionate, dramatic vocals", and has an underlying Christian theme, framing Kirk's political activism as embodying the beliefs of Jesus himself. In the song's verses, the male AI voice sings that Kirk was "a man of conviction" who "lived for Jesus" and "spoke the truth" of his political beliefs "when the cost was high". In the chorus, it proclaims that "we", meaning Kirk's supporters, "are Charlie Kirk" himself, and that they will "honor his name" and "carry the flame" of his political legacy. By doing this, the voice proclaims, "we'll fight for the Gospel" and thus "make Heaven known" to nonbelievers.[19][22][24][21] According to GPTZero, a software tool which detects the usage of large language model AI generations in text, there is a 99% chance the song's lyrics were also generated using AI.[26]
Reception
Critical reception
"We Are Charlie Kirk" was panned by media outlets. Multiple writers labelled it "slop".[19][24][27] Harrison Brocklehurst wrote for The Tab that it had "cursed" lyrics and deserved to be mocked, but that it was stuck in his head. Referencing the AI vocalist's loud delivery, he claimed the song was "honestly one of the loudest things ever put to record", if an AI song can be considered to have been "put to record".[24]Kotaku writer Kenneth Shepard negatively described it as "absolutely one of the most ostentatious, dramatic pieces of 'music' I've ever heard", positing it as the "musical encapsulation of the right's self-important made-up war on behalf of Christianity".[19]The Mary Sue writer Braden Bjella said it was "low quality [in] both its lyrics and instrumentation", and a writer for Al Bawaba said its lyrics were "uninspired" and its vocals "robotic".[26][17]Der Freitag writer Konstantin Nowotny worried about the usage of AI to create songs like "We Are Charlie Kirk", which he labelled "right-wing extremist propaganda".[28]
Viral spread
The song is one of many songs made to memorialize Kirk after his assassination, and became the most popular of them within three months. Shortly after its release, ViVO Tunes, a YouTube and TikTok account which exclusively posts AI generated videos of celebrities singing popular songs, released a series of AI videos of conservative figures like Donald Trump and JD Vance tearfully singing the song; these videos' comment sections indicate that many believed the videos were real, and this may be the partial reason behind the song's success. For example, on a video of Kirk's wife Erika singing the song, one account replied: "I never knew Erika was a singer and she sounds amazing."[29][24] These uploads were similar to other social media accounts' viral AI-generated videos of celebrity musicians—such as Celine Dion, Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift—singing different Kirk-related tribute songs.[30] Braden Bjella writes:[26]
"[...] studies have suggested that people with right-wing ideologies may be exposed to more AI-generated content than people who identify as centrist or left-wing. This could have the effect of normalizing AI-generated content, making songs like that aforementioned "We Are Charlie Kirk" sound more "normal" than they would to someone who hadn't been exposed to AI content."
Other popular usages of "We Are Charlie Kirk" on TikTok include users recording their relatives' reactions to the song, as well as cover versions of it.[21] Eventually, if a TikTok user searched Kirk's name, even if they were looking for news videos about the assassination, there was a high likelihood they would receive tribute videos featuring "We Are Charlie Kirk" instead.[26]
The song first spread beyond conservative spaces after TikTok user cp_alo shared it, adding it was "genuinely the worst f**king song I've ever heard in my life"; their video has been viewed eight million times.[31] It further spread when Twitter user Griffin (@ohiojesustwink) posted it with the caption: "Accidentally stumbled across this (presumably A.I [sic] generated) Charlie Kirk memorial song. It is, without question, the funniest thing I've ever heard. This has close to 100k monthly listeners, by the way." The post received immediate attention from users negatively reacting to the song or its AI generated status. Some unfavorably compared it to "uncle music", as well as the bands Imagine Dragons and Sleep Token.[26]
After ViVO Tunes, the song was accompanied to videos on platforms like TikTok, both by genuine supporters of Kirk who found the song emotional, as well as those making fun of Kirk and his death, or the song and its noticeable AI "accent". It was accompanied to many TikTok uploads of "Kirkifications", photos and videos of other pop cultural figures—such as IShowSpeed, Jeffrey Epstein, and the characters of Grand Theft Auto VI—who have had their face edited to be replaced with Kirk's.[20][27] Harrison Brocklehurst wrote that many of these ironic meme creators found "We Are Charlie Kirk" genuinely compelling in spite of their dislike of its lyrical content. He griped that the song had widely been ironically applied to videos of "epic" scenarios unrelated to Kirk:[24]
"You can trust and believe right now that literally any time a dramatic montage of a fight scene from a film is going on or maybe a clip from Stranger Things—some abysmal person has dubbed the We Are Charlie Kirk song at full volume over the top."
Kenneth Shepard describes some of these latter videos as a modern version of the rickroll, an Internet-based prank originating in the 2000s, in which someone gets tricked into opening the YouTube link for Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up"; in the case of "We Are Charlie Kirk", someone might watch a seemingly normal video, only to be negatively surprised by the song's inclusion.[19][32]
The song was soon placed at the top of Spotify's "Viral 50 - Global" playlist of charting viral songs—both in the U.S. and globally—which increased its reach. As Spalexma's most popular song on the platform, it currently has one million streams, with 1.8 million users saving the song to their libraries. On TikTok, the song has been used in 58,000 videos. ViVO Tunes' videos with the song have individually received millions of views; the most popular one, featuring Erika Kirk, has received 2.3 million.[19][29][30] Spalexma's upload of the song has 750,000 views on YouTube.[21]
Commercial
On the chart week dated for December 6, 2025, "We Are Charlie Kirk" debuted at its peak position of number 26 on the BillboardHot Christian Songs chart.[33] The following week, it reached its peak position of No. 21.[34]
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