"We Are Charlie Kirk" is a presumably AI-generated song credited to Spalexma, which was released on September 16, 2025. It is a commemoration to American right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on September 10, 2025. It was initially released as the final track to Spalexma's album Charlie Kirk Forever Alive, one of eighteen Christian-themed albums credited to Spalexma in 2025.
The song first spread on social media due to its inclusion in AI-generated videos of conservative figures tearfully singing it, such as Charlie's wife Erika Kirk. Uploaded by a TikTok and YouTube user named ViVO Tunes, potentially many users thought the videos were real. Other TikTok accounts then attached the song to their own commemorations to Kirk, as well as ironic memes making light of his death. The latter posts included photos and videos of his face edited onto other pop cultural figures' heads, referred to as "Kirkified" images. "We Are Charlie Kirk" ultimately appeared in over 58,000 videos on the platform. Assuming it was created by AI, it became one of the first AI-generated works to ever list on Billboard and Spotify's viral song charts.
Charlie Kirk was an American right-wing political activist and founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA). Throughout his career, he was generally popular among the American right wing, though his more controversial positions were criticized by many scholars, commentators, and detractors.[1][2][3] On September 10, 2025, during a TPUSA event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Kirk was assassinated. A man named Tyler Robinson was arrested and charged for the shooting.[4][5] Conservatives gave an outpouring of praise for Kirk's activism, while many news organizations criticized its bigotry.[6][7][8]Internet memes making light of Kirk's death went viral on platforms such as Twitter.[3][9]
Prior to Kirk's assassination, text, photos, videos, and music developed by generative artificial intelligence programs like ChatGPT had become widespread on online platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.[10][11] These AI programs have been blamed for causing these platforms to be filled with perceived low-quality artificial content, nicknamed "AI slop".[12][13] 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".[14][15] Some of the social media content either commemorating or criticizing his legacy appears to be AI-generated.[10][16]
On September 16, 2025, six days after Kirk's assassination, "We Are Charlie Kirk" was uploaded onto music streaming services, credited to Spalexma.[17] The profile is anonymous, does not have a social media presence, and is known to be associated only with an organization named "SP Music Project".[15][17] Spalexma began being credited with publishing music in May 2024.[18] "We Are Charlie Kirk" is one of many songs among their 18 Christian-themed albums released in 2025, all of them presumably AI-generated. The song specifically was flagged by streaming service Deezer's AI music detection software as being artificially generated.[15][17][19] It was initially uploaded as the final song on an 11-track album titled Charlie Kirk Forever Alive.[15][18]
"We Are Charlie Kirk" is a 3½ minute song with stylistic similarities to the power ballad genre in the 1980s.[20] Between Kirk's assassination and the song's release, the titular phrase had been used as a protest slogan by his supporters.[21] The song memorializes Kirk with "loudly passionate, dramatic vocals", and has an underlying Christian theme, framing Kirk as a martyr who "lived for Jesus", and encourages supporters to continue that religious legacy.[20][17][19][22]
Reception
Critical reception
"We Are Charlie Kirk" was panned by media outlets, with several writers labelling it as "slop".[20][19][23] 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 vocals' loud delivery, he claimed the song was "honestly one of the loudest things ever put to record", continuing, "Can you say put to record actually, when it’s clearly been made by AI? Probably not."[19]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".[20]The Mary Sue's 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".[24][15]Paste listed it as the worst song of 2025.[25]
Multiple writers criticized the song for presumably being created by AI. Konstantin Nowotny wrote for Der Freitag that he was concerned about the usage of AI to create "right-wing extremist propaganda" music like it.[26] In a December 2025 debate in San Francisco between writers Mike Solana and Sam Kriss, the latter told the local tech industry workers in attendance (including Substack CEO Chris Best) that "your contribution to global culture is software for churning out AI-generated crap" like "We Are Charlie Kirk".[27] Later that month, Pitchfork ranked 101 moments in and around music culture in 2025 from 0.1 to 10.0. They listed "'We Are Charlie Kirk' AI song" at 0.7.[28]
Viral spread
"We Are Charlie Kirk" 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-generated videos of conservative figures like Donald Trump and JD Vance tearfully singing the song; some listeners may have believed the videos were real, and this may be the partial reason behind the song's success.[29][19] These uploads were similar to other viral AI-generated videos of celebrity musicians—such as Celine Dion, Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift—singing different songs about Kirk that are also characteristic of AI-generation.[30] Braden Bjella writes:[24]
"[...] 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."
After ViVO Tunes, "We Are Charlie Kirk" was attached to videos on platforms like TikTok, both by genuine supporters of Kirk who found the song emotional, as well as those making light of Kirk and his death, or criticizing the song and its noticeable AI "accent".[16][23] It 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 was viewed over eight million times.[31] It then went viral on Twitter when 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."[24]
Eventually, if a TikTok user searched Kirk's name, even if they were looking for legitimate news about the assassination, there was a high likelihood they would receive videos featuring "We Are Charlie Kirk" instead.[24] Users then started attaching the song to posts featuring photos and videos of other pop cultural figures—such as IShowSpeed, Jeffrey Epstein, and the characters of Grand Theft Auto VI—whose faces are edited to be replaced with Kirk's, colloquially known as "Kirkified" images.[16][23] Harrison Brocklehurst wrote that many of these meme creators found the song genuinely compelling in spite of their dislike of its lyrical content. He griped that it had widely been ironically attached to videos of "epic" scenarios unrelated to Kirk:[19]
"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 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" by clicking on a seemingly unrelated link.[20] 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.[22]
Views and commercial reception
During its viral spread, the song placed atop Spotify's "Viral 50 - Global" playlist of charting songs, which expanded its reach.[29][30] On TikTok, it was attached to over 58,000 videos, and Spalexma's YouTube upload of it received over 750,000 views.[22][29] ViVO Tunes' videos with the song individually received millions of views on those two platforms; the most popular one, featuring Erika Kirk, received over 2.3 million.[20][29][30] On the week of December 6, 2025, "We Are Charlie Kirk" debuted at number 26 on the BillboardHot Christian Songs chart.[32] It reached its peak position of number 21 the following week.[33] Assuming it was created by AI, this made it one of the first-ever AI-generated songs on a Billboard or Spotify chart.[34][35]
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