The time is not quite ripe to reveal it here, but over the past few weeks, I’ve put a wrap on 30 full-length albums I made using Suno. During that time, I’ve watched with interest the evolving story around the new AI artist who signed an allegedly $3 million deal with Hallwood media, Xania Monet. One of the wrinkles that has received I think too much attention in this saga has been Xania’s being called out by a human artist named Kehlani, who criticized Xania for being basically not human enough.
“There is an AI R&B artist who just signed a multimillion-dollar deal … and the person is doing none of the work,” a frustrated-sounding Kehlani told followers without directly naming Monet or Jones. “This is so beyond out of our control.” […]
Regardless, Kehlani says, “Nothing and no one on Earth will ever be able to justify AI to me.”
They added, “I don’t respect it.”
I’ve thought a lot about this, and personally, I don’t really like Xania’s songs, one of which has racked up at least 2.3M views on YouTube, and Billboard elsewhere estimates a total of 17M listens across platforms.
Monet’s most popular track, “How Was I Supposed to Know?,” which has ranked in the top 10 on Billboard’s R&B Digital Song Sales for two weeks in a row and hit No. 22 last week on the Digital Song Sales chart overall, has accumulated 22,700 song equivalents in the U.S. and more than 3 million on-demand audio and video streams.
Here’s the track:
Whether or not I actually like it is, of course, entirely irrelevant. Because those streaming numbers don’t lie (I’ve seen no suggestion of inauthentic stream/fraudulent activity anywhere with regards to this). For me the music sounds a little bit on the boring and derivative side. But what I think doesn’t matter, because it seems that potentially millions of people enjoy it.
“… to rule out everything I personally abhor would be to rule out the possibility of a future miracle.”
“Abhor” is a very strong word here, and it’s a long way from how I feel when I listen to this track, which sparks a lot less negative emotion for me. I just don’t particularly like it, rather than hate it or what it stands for personally. But I do think the public reaction, which has largely been unfortunately shaped by Kehlani’s reaction is a little bit on the ridiculous side.
Why? Well, because for me, Kehlani’s music is pretty much also on the slightly boring and derivative side. Even if she’s a “human.” Exhibit B:
And here’s my thing: as far as I can tell, Kehlani has no greater right to say she is a “human” than does Xania’s actual creator, one Telisha “Nikki” Jones. Kehlani does not, in my eyes, have some monopoly over what it means to be authentic or human than anyone else does. Kehlani’s statement, referenced above, in part reads:
“Nothing and no one on Earth will ever be able to justify AI to me.”
My question is basically: so what? Why does anyone else need to justify the art that they make to some basically random person who is unhappy about it? Because in my experience of being a person on the internet, there is basically always some random person(s) who will be unhappy about literally anything you do, and will do their level best to cut you down for it.
Regarding Xania’s record deal, Kehlani further stated, “the person is doing none of the work.” But again, Kehlani has no monopoly on what it means to put effort into something, just because her work follows a particular more conventional mode of creation, where Xania/Jones’ follows a new, different, emerging one. Kehlani also has, as far as I can tell, no magical crystal ball that gives her exclusive insight into the very real struggles we all equally face as humans on this planet, trying to survive & thrive against all odds, and against a system which all equally tries to pull us down at every step of the way.
To suggest someone using AI is doing “none of the work” is to fundamentally misunderstand that as artists, the “work” we all do is the work of merely living. And we all do it equally at the end of the day, regardless of what tools or technologies we use to express that business of living creatively. When we accuse someone else of not engaging in the true authentic work of living, of being a creative person in a society which at times seems almost entirely purpose-built for crushing creative people – simply because we don’t like what they created – we essentially pile ever more work on that person, forcing them to deal with more and more of our own accumulated baggage in addition to whatever portion nature or society has already allocated them to bear. None of us can truly see into the soul of anyone else and therefore has the right to sit in some absolute holy judgement over the pain of the effort anyone else has gone through in their lives to get where they are.
I think it’s perfectly fine for Kehlani, or anyone else, to simply not like Xania’s music. As I said, I don’t particularly enjoy listening to it myself. But what I do or don’t like is all but irrelevant in the face of millions of people who do like it, who do find threads that resonate with their own personal experiences of what it means to be doing the work of being human. It feels selfish and narrow to me to try to undercut that very obviously real sentiment – and for what? Because Kehlani and others obviously feel threatened by someone else who has figured out a different solution to the problems put onto artists by capitalism? To me, that’s cheap.
I’ve wondered in this game too, at what point a “grifter” becomes a “hustler” which is more socially & culturally acceptable. Why are we supposed to “respect the hustle” but scorn the grift? It’s the same damn thing. The reality is we’re all stuck in the same sad, bullshit pathetic grind. If people are able to find some way out of that maze – any way at all – and share some light in the tunnel while doing it, well, I personally *do* respect that. Even if I don’t think it’s necessary that anyone else has to justify any of it to me. At the end of the day, every person who follows the artist’s path is only responsible to their own inner light, their own creative voice and urging that keeps them up in the middle of the night, and keeps them going. The rest to me, increasingly, is just so much noise, and to quote Kehlani’s words back on her, I don’t respect it either.
I have been going pretty hog wild on Suno these past few weeks. And one thing that has been firmly solidified in my head is that, because these tools allow basically anybody to output essentially the same type of music (especially if they can copy your prompt), then basically everything depends in the end on the narrative wrapper in which you deliver your finished products to the consumer.
Thought this old archived NYT article by David Byrne about why he hates the label “world music” had some interesting and quotable moments, like this one:
The issue of ”authenticity” is such a weird can of worms. Westerners get obsessed with it. They agonize over which is the ”true” music, the real deal. I question the authenticity of some of the new-age ethnofusion music that’s out there, but I also know that to rule out everything I personally abhor would be to rule out the possibility of a future miracle. Everybody knows the world has two types of music — my kind and everyone else’s. And even my kind ain’t always so great.
What is considered authentic today was probably some kind of bastard fusion a few years ago. An all-Japanese salsa orchestra’s record (Orquestra de la Luz) was No. 1 on the salsa charts in the United States not long ago. Did the New York salseros care? No, most loved the songs and were frankly amazed. African guitar bands were doing their level best to copy Cuban rumbas, and in their twisted failure thay came up with something new. So let’s not make any rules about who can make a specific style of music.
Been meaning to quote this bit from CS Lewis forever & here it is:
Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can’t bear to think of. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the…atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.
I’ve noticed a trend after following Velvet Sundown news and commentary: namely, that every single influencer or content creator who has made some kind of post or video trying to shame The Velvet Sundown for being a “grift” is most assuredly themselves running their own social media grift fueled on begging for likes, follows, and all the rest. The grift goes all the way down…
TechRadar just published a piece, “AI music is fine until it starts pretending to be real people” and another site, MusicTech, seems to agree: “Hoaxes and scams are holding back the potential of AI music.” I get the sentiment, but I beg to differ in terms of actual outcomes. I can personally attest that the pretending to be real people angle is 100% where the media interest is. You can say what you want about whether or not that is holding up the emergence of some legitimate AI-assisted art forms or genres, but I don’t think we can or should try to separate out the “fakeness” side of this story. At least not just yet, because the entire evolution of these tools has to do with the mechanics of training and replacement, simulation, and even – dare I say it -“grift.”
From the MusicTech article:
One study showed that 60 per cent of music consumers would willingly listen to AI-generated music, while another survey revealed that 46 per cent of artists would consider using AI music tools in the future. The problem is: an even larger number are unwilling to admit it. In the same survey, more than 50 per cent of artists said they would hide their use of AI, fearful of how their audience might react.
Without being too controversial, I would submit that all these people are being babies about this topic. If they’re interested in trying it, just frickin try it holy crap. Sure, it’s new, it’s different, it requires us to rethink our basic assumptions and come up with new paths forward. I think that’s good. That means new opportunities, and that some old ones will dry up. But that is always the way of the flux of culture and technology over time. It’s no different. I’m old enough to remember in the 1990’s when it was still taboo to enter your credit card number on websites, because it seemed “unsafe.” Well, I guess it’s still sort of unsafe, but now we just deal with it & you get a new credit card or whatever if you become the victim of fraud. The point is though, it’s now archaic and passé to be so scared of putting your credit card number onto a website that you only buy things in person, and only using cash or a check. Times change. Do you still have a landline at your house? Well, I do, but most people don’t (so I hear).
MusicTech’s article ends:
It’s not too late for AI to find its legitimate place in music history, but it’s high time we bring it into the light of day so there can be greater transparency around its use. With that we can dispel the shadowy practices that concealing its real impact. There are many artists ready to experiment with AI, and plenty of listeners who will be the first to judge how good it really sounds. But only with an open culture between everyone involved will we find out what AI can actually offer music, and what it can’t.
Meh. I’m not sure anybody but the click-hungry pearl-clutchers really cares at the end of the day. And I think this bit from TechRadar’s piece is equally “meh”…
And while there’s nothing wrong with liking an AI song per se, there’s everything wrong with not knowing it is an AI song. Consent and context are missing, and that fundamentally changes the listening experience.
“Everything wrong?” Come on. It’s just a dumb AI song. I really dgaf. I’m not going to be somehow mysteriously harmed by listening to an AI song that I didn’t know was AI? This is just nonsense. And nobody asks for my “consent” to force me to listen to their stupid “shopping beats” if I go to the mall, or for motorcyclists blaring their radios when they drive by my house.
I think these authors are barking up the wrong horse & that their train has sailed. Grift is the new normal. And it is not a uniquely AI problem. It is a capitalism problem. It is, essentially, just capitalism. And nobody asked for my “consent” for that either, but here we are!
I added a new, rather long, page to the site which consists of a visual portfolio of still images, videos, and photos of actual physical objects that I made. Difficult to distill down well over a hundred thousand artifacts into a small set, but good enough for today. Enjoy!
A tragic end has taken the real human band the Velvet Sundown is based on before their time:
Or that’s what “they” want you to believe. Maybe it’s all a cover up on top of a cover up… The world may never know the truth of this incredible, stupid story…
I noticed that some people, including journalists, seem to have misinterpreted the latest CBC reveal. User Robert1950 on the forum Guitarscanada.com posted a link to the article with the thread title, “Creator of AI Band Velvet Sundown revealed.” No comments so far have accumulated.
A user on Bluesky also seems to have misinterpreted the substance of the actual reveal, referencing the article, “Well the creator just unmasked himself… and he is Canadian.”
A website called TenAsia takes that a step farther and misattributes a quote from the “real” band to me:
“The creator, Tim Boucher, a web platform safety and policy expert from Quebec, stated in an interview with foreign media, “Velvet Sundown exists somewhere between being fully human and fully machine,” and expressed his desire to challenge music copyright and identity through artistic provocation using AI.”
Granted, these are all easy mistakes to make, especially for people who are not professionally following — or inventing — the story. Or, for people who haven’t quite read and absorbed all the details in the article. But no matter! This is the internet – where we’re going, we don’t need to read “articles!”
Speaking of skimming articles, I thought this “song of the summer” piece from CNN was a bit of a dud, since it not only suggests there is none for 2025, but proposes couldn’t we maybe just go back and use one from last summer? Meanwhile trashing what is obviously far and away the *true* “Song of the Summer 2025”:
Or maybe, Errico suggested, the song of the summer is one that best exemplifies the quickening encroachment of AI into creative fields, like AI band Velvet Sundown’s AI song, “Dust on the Wind.” Even the title sounds like a Fleetwood Mac-inspired ChatGPT prompt.
Lastly, in my round-up of mildly interesting miscellaneous Velvet Sundown misinformation bits and bobs is this piece from Charleston, South Carolina’s Post and Courier paper about a local musician (confusingly named after a different geographic locale, Johnny Delaware) who was misattributed as being an AI music act. What’s the word for this, when someone is accused of being AI, but they are not and/or they deny it? “AI-jacketing” maybe?
An article about the phenomenon appearing in The Atlantic that’s raising questions about transparency and legality regarding AI on streaming platforms referred to Johnny Delaware as another potential fake band. The story labeled Delaware a “related artist” to The Velvet Sundown on Spotify.
In fact, he’s a very real artist with quite the following right here in the Holy City — he has a show coming up at the Music Farm on Aug. 8.
In response to the AI claim, Delaware released a video on social media calling out the journalist behind the July 4 story for not properly fact-checking.
Awkward. An archived version of the Atlantic article mentions Delaware in passing, within the context of trying to find other songs that sound similar to The Velvet Sundown:
I pondered for a moment whether any of the other artists on my custom playlist (the South Carolina folk-rock singer-songwriter Johnny Delaware? The Belgian folk-pop quartet Lemon Straw?) might be fake—and how one might try to suss that out.
Delaware in the video suggests the author of the piece didn’t simply Google the musician to see their many videos and other media artifacts. Incidentally, a widely re-posted AP article about spotting AI-generated songs in the wild suggests that listeners “do a background check” before ultimately conceding that there are “no easy answers.”
In the Post and Courier Piece, Delaware is subsequently quoted:
“I mean, I have no control, so all you can do is observe and let it ruin your life or just laugh at it,” he told The Post and Courier.
Delaware said he wrote both The Atlantic reporter and the podcast hosts, who offered to interview him. He declined, at least for now.
“It’s a really weird situation,” he said. “I don’t want to be involved with it, but it’s kind of following me around. … Like maybe misinformation about me being a robot isn’t worth me getting into.”
I’ve… obviously taken a really different tack in this saga, and clearly I disagree with the approach Delaware is outlining above. One, I think he does have a lot of control here to shape it in the media and on social platforms. Two, whether or not you want to be involved with them, when things like this come up, they are simply opportunities. Me, I tend to lean into this kind of thing. I guess I tend to, at the end of the day, maybe even encourage misinformation about me being a robot. But that’s just me!
I have often wondered these last three weeks what would make the most interesting story ending: whether or not it should turn out that I am actually Andrew Frelon, and whether Frelon did or didn’t actually make the real Velvet Sundown band, and was or wasn’t punking everyone the whole time in some sort of multi-layered post-reality meta-hoax.
I’ve gamed out every side of those variables, and in some cases thrown out red herrings consisting of alternate reality story-endings where some of those things appear to be true – just to see where they go – when in actual here-and-now reality, they are squarely not.
In truth, I have searched high and low both as an OSINT investigator, and as a mildly obsessed weirdo superfan to try and figure out who the actual person or people behind the band must be. And I have come up empty-handed on all counts. To my credit, so it seems has everyone else who has been searching since this ridiculous phenomenon began.
And ridiculous it most certainly is. I never expected this little stupid charade to last more than a few days, but instead it has exploded on the global stage, been the subject of intense media coverage and social media commentary, even spawning an entire cottage industry of people capitalizing on AI-related fear and outrage for clicks. But then, that’s everything nowadays. Outrage for clicks. You can’t escape it. So might as well join it? I’m not sure it’s as simple as that, because when you join it, you become subject too to the infection.
As someone who did content moderation for a platform and had to handle tens of thousands of complaints and beefs between users for years and years, I guess ultimately the reason I did all this was really simple: revenge. I wanted the world to experience the sheer utter collapse of reality and sanity I have been witness to all these years behind the scenes working for platforms, trying desperately and vainly to help maintain some semblance of “order.”
Nobody really thinks about it, but you know all the horrible stuff you see constantly on social media, and maybe even “report” when it’s really bad? Well, content moderators are exposed to all that human toxicity and brainrot multiplied by at least a thousand, day in and day out. We are the thin invisible line that (theoretically) protects corporate profitability and brand integrity from the vagaries and savagery of base human nature, as expressed through digital tools.
I know by now that, of the five or so people reading this post, all but maybe one of them will have since stopped reading on account of it being “lengthy” – which was oddly the number one criticism anyone seems to have leveled against Andrew Frelon’s original exposé post explaining how he kicked one past the media gatekeepers’ goalpost. Our minds are so fragmented now from social media, short form videos, doomscrolling, and all the rest that we literally cannot parse thoughtful text in long form. Most people, if they’ve made it this far, are probably by now feverishly asking ChatGPT to summarize the article for them. Here, I’ll save you the trouble, but it will only be for the first section above, not what comes next:
Summary of the text so far:
The narrator reflects on whether they are Andrew Frelon and whether Frelon created the Velvet Sundown band as a hoax.
They admit to planting false leads and alternate realities as part of the narrative experiment.
Despite deep investigation, they found no definitive identity behind the band.
The hoax unexpectedly went viral, drawing global attention and media scrutiny.
The narrator, a former content moderator, reveals the stunt was driven by revenge—born from years of exposure to toxic online content.
They comment on society’s declining attention span and the irony that most readers will need this very summary.
There, did that help? Or did that just make it longer and boringer? I bet your fingers are twitch-twitch-twitching to close this browser tab, desperately seeking where the “Unfollow” button is on this blog (there is none!).
Content moderation messes your mind up. It’s really basic. It cooks your brain. It took me literally years to let go of some of the weird acute physical reactions I had picked up from over-exposure to certain types of negative tropes and shitty arguments online. I have had, as a result, many demons to exorcise (and exercise).
But I don’t ask for your sympathy, because in today’s attention economy, that is worth less than nothing. I ask only for your anger, because I know that is all that anybody has left to give anyway. So pour it out, I can wait. I’ve seen it all before. Every argument. Every mean name. Every threat. Every “kill yourself” comment. It’s all completely pointless, though you might think it makes you feel good in the moment. Then what? Then, the next thing and the next thing, until you’re strung out and anxious always hunting & fearing the ONE SIMPLE TRICK! that will drive you over the edge…
What I’ve learned in all that is that hate and anger are completely predictable. Programmable even. If you put ABC inputs into the machine, out the other side comes – poof! – XYZ outraged outputs. It’s so very evident from everything around us politically and socially that it’s just played out to even go on and on about it anymore. So why bother?
Because this cage that we’ve built for ourselves – that we’ve let companies build around us in the name of enabling us to “connect” with one another – well, it fucking sucks. It’s not normal or good or healthy. It is absolute trash from top to bottom. And it all needs to be burned down.
There are those who fight it, who fight the good fight on social media, and in journalism, and politics, and everywhere, but what I’ve seen is that it never ends. There is no salvation in counting likes and follows and impressions. There are not enough fact checkers in the universe to dig us out of the black hole we’ve fallen head over heels into.
Anyway, this all was supposed to be a short preamble, but serving up my rage became its own dish when I started writing it. And what do they say about revenge being a dish served cold? Something something... Maybe I should ask ChatGPT again to help put a neat bow on this, but I won’t. You’re going to have to find your own meaning in all of this, if there is any to be found…
Over the past few weeks, many journalists have asked me what is the “message” I want people to take away from all this. And despite all my doom and gloom, I’ve actually come away from this all with some strangely hopeful sentiments. They are, for now, three:
If everything is fake, then our imagination is now one of the most important human faculties (and probably was all along, even before “post-reality). Imagination is uniquely suited to spelunking for “truths” that match our intuitions, even and especially if it has to construct those truths whole cloth. And constructed truth is better than no truth at all, isn’t it? Isn’t it??
Number 2 one comes from a lecture by “superfictions” artist Peter Hill, who years ago invented a fake NYC museum, which became the envy of Germany, and who said: “Through fiction and imagination you can make things happen in reality quicker and more effectively than you can through the so-called normal bureaucratic channels.” My experience has proven that to be correct, but which “things” have I made happen? Hard still to say at this early juncture, I guess.
And lastly, this whole thing has taught me very plainly that, despite what I had thought – and what the world had beaten into me over decades of living under its spell – that one person actually *CAN* make a difference. But therein lies the problem: what difference? What should we even aim for?
It’s been interesting to watch how my actions, underhanded as they were, have lead to widespread calls for transparent labeling of AI-generated content. Even BPI, the British Phonographic Industry, is now backing AI content labeling because of the Velvet Sundown Affair. [Insert: Did I do that? Urkel Meme]
While I understand labels are one of the cudgels people always try to cling to in times of escalating uncertainty – thinking that mere words will save us from the infinite downward slide – I’ve roped and wrangled in this rodeo before. Alongside “boots on the ground” content moderation, I’ve also ridden the “dust on the wind” policy/standards side of these problems, much of which had to do with using machine learning to try to automatically label certain categories of polarizing and divisive content. In order to… something that I’m still not entirely clear on years later, I will admit…
What I saw in all that good, well-intentioned work is that labels do basically nothing. Sure, a few people say they want it, but if I made my obviously deepfake political commentary in Sora versus Kling vesus AI-flavor-of-the-week, does that really change anything? The labeling conversation is based on this Enlightenment ideal that says: hey, if we just give people access to all the “correct” information, well they will be smart and motivated enough to go out and make the “right” decision all on their own. Narrator: they won’t. They will ignore the labels. They will find ways to bend and break and spoof and mock the labels. We will have spun our wheels yet again on another micro-fix of an enormous macro-scale problem that maybe has no answer.
But I get it: it’s uncomfortable to face that some problems are so big we can’t actually fix them, and don’t know how to extricate ourselves from the systems which perpetuate them – even if we wanted to. Which we most assuredly do not. We love our cage now. We crave it. We can think of almost nothing else.
When is the last time you ate a meal with other people where one/several/everyone at the table wasn’t on their cell phone some/most/all of the time? People bitch and moan about “AI slop” taking over the world (and honestly, Andrew Frelon’s efforts being included on the Wikipedia AI slop page is one of the greatest non-parenting achievements of my mostly ridiculous life), but we’re already all absolutely robots hopelessly addicted to our devices and the digital drugs they administer directly into our nervous systems. It doesn’t matter if the slop is AI or human anymore. We do whatever the algorithm tells us to do, buy what it tells us to buy, drive where it tells us to drive, talk to, or love, or hate whomever it tells us to. This is a fight we’ve steadily and blithely lost over the last twenty-plus years. We’re only too happy to give up our agency and autonomy in exchange for the shimmering false hope of “virality.” And I can tell you from experience, “going viral” brings you absolutely nothing. No material changes to your life. It comes and goes like a tremendous dose of a painful buzzy drug, and then it’s over and you’re left numb, wondering how to do it all over again. Virality is just thousands of people blaming you for their pervasive unhappiness.
I give up on it. I wash my hands of that world. I won’t live in it. I’ll live in my garden, with my hedgerow, with my willows, with my baskets. With my family. And my imagination. And that will have to be enough. Cause what other choice do I have? Society is crumbling. Everything everywhere is on fire. Nothing is real.
By now, no doubt, the one half of one quarter of one percent of one person who is still using ChatGPT to summarize this article has come up with something like the below, which itself is quite long, but seems accurate for what its worth:
Extended Summary:
Following the initial reflection on identity ambiguity and narrative manipulation, the narrator transitions into a deeper, more personal exposition of motivations, particularly emphasizing a history in content moderation. This occupational background—defined by prolonged exposure to online toxicity—serves as the foundational grievance fueling the Velvet Sundown hoax, framed explicitly as an act of revenge against the structural and psychological burdens imposed by digital platforms.
The text evolves into a critical dissection of modern information ecosystems, positing that outrage and virality are not merely emergent properties but engineered outputs of algorithmically predictable behavioral responses. The narrator argues that efforts to impose order through AI content labeling and fact-checking are futile within an attention economy structurally designed to reward emotional extremity and superficial engagement.
Simultaneously, the narrative acknowledges the performative and cathartic dimensions of the hoax, conceding that its unanticipated success has precipitated industry-wide discussions about media literacy, AI regulation, and authenticity. Yet, this acknowledgment is juxtaposed with a nihilistic appraisal of systemic intractability—suggesting that current frameworks are inadequate for addressing the scale and nature of the problem.
The conclusion abandons prescriptive solutions entirely, embracing a retreat into personal autonomy, familial connection, and imaginative resilience as the only viable responses to a reality increasingly mediated—and eroded—by digital saturation. The narrator effectively declares ideological withdrawal from the digital sphere, positioning this act not as defeat, but as an intentional reclaiming of agency.
Hell yeah, ChatGPT. Hell yeah.
Now that the ranting part of tonight’s performance is finished (mostly), we can turn to a quick review of the literature before the curtain comes down and they come for me with the hook.
There were a few of big pieces that came out in the past couple weeks or so which I thought really captured the spirit of the game which was afoot at the time.
First was Kevin Maimann’s fine July 5th CBC piece, which remains one of the best and most faithful tellings of the overall story, and which I think rightly identified that Frelon caused a “a media frenzy that propelled the AI-assisted band’ to a million monthly listeners on Spotify.” (I maintain that the “real” Velvet Sundown band might have made a few songs using Suno, but it was Frelon’s maneuvering that turned them into a legend.)
Next was Glenn Peoples’ July 11th Billboard reporting which compared Frelon’s legend-making to the controversy around Bob Vylan and Kneecap, and which seemed to suggest Frelon’s was maybe a bigger deal in the end:
The Velvet Sundown, the AI-generated retro rock group that launched out of nowhere in June, has done something many real bands struggle to achieve: Gain worldwide media attention that converts into streams at Spotify and other streaming platforms.
In the week ended July 3, The Velvet Sundown’s catalog of 26 songs — spanning two albums — generated 2.59 million streams globally, according to Luminate. That’s a staggering 399% increase from the previous week. The surge followed a flood of online coverage at music trades, mainstream newspapers, and popular YouTube channels, all intrigued by the novelty — and the ethical implications — surrounding an artificial band that diverts attention (and royalties) from actual musicians.
After more than two weeks of media coverage, the buzz hasn’t died down. The Velvet Sundown has been featured in major publications, including articles at BBC.com and a long-form think piece in The Atlantic. In an era when viral fame often fades in hours, the sustained interest — from both the media and the public — is remarkable. Just six weeks ago, the band had zero streams. Today, it boasts 1.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify, up from approximately 300,000 following a viral Reddit post about the band on June 24. […]
The Velvet Sundown represents a reality of the music business in 2025: Getting online attention, whether complimentary or critical, helps an artist rise above the noise and find listeners. Notoriety — being known for something negative — isn’t necessarily a liability.
There’s more, but that’s (hopefully) enough to get my point across to the 0.0000001% of a person still reading this “lengthy” blog post.
… [P]seudonymous band spokesperson and ‘adjunct’ member Andrew Frelon now admits, ‘It’s marketing. It’s trolling. People before, they didn’t care about what we did, and now suddenly, we’re talking to Rolling Stone, so it’s like, ‘Is that wrong?’”
Not if you ask the countless impresarios throughout history who courted controversy to similarly make a name for themselves.
Frelon comes from a long line of enterprising artists who leveraged controversy to generate publicity. As far back as the 1840s, P.T. Barnum, perhaps the first real American showman, exploited this reliable tactic. Famously, he exhibited a grotesque creature he professed to be a real mermaid.
In reality, he had sown a monkey’s torso to a fish tail to garner attention. Barnum also used to plant fake letters and disparaging stories about himself in newspapers to pique curiosity, recognizing the utility of being in the public eye, even if for the wrong reasons.
Likewise, master manipulator/comedian Andy Kaufman blurred the line between performance and reality by creating his alter ego, Tony Clifton, a belligerent lounge singer. Kaufman even went so far as to pay his pal Bob Zmuda to impersonate Clifton so the two could be seen at the same event, further throwing the public off the scent.
What’s so unique about this moment in time is that the artistic deceptions of Barnum, Kaufman, and others look quaint compared to what’s now available, courtesy of AI. The term deepfake may be applied as a catch-all encompassing the myriad ways in which people can now deceive at a scale previously unimaginable.
There’s also a more personal note that someone left on the original Frelon Medium post, one which tells me maybe the whole exercise was not such a waste of time after all, even if it only reached this one person. User “Zeline’s Secrets” wrote on July 4th:
Reading this made me pause and think about how blurry the line between fiction and reality has become online. I remember stumbling upon parody accounts years ago and feeling that jolt of surprise when realizing they weren’t “real” — now I almost expect layers of performance in every profile. There’s something oddly comforting about accounts that announce their fakeness upfront, like we’re all in on the joke together. It makes me wonder how much of my own online persona is unintentional performance, even when I’m trying to be authentic. The internet feels like one big collaborative theater piece sometimes, where we’re all both audience and actors without a script.
Really, there has been way too much media to carefully track and archive it all. And so much of it has been incredible, absolute, utter trash. Unoriginal re-reporting up the wazoo. Massively failed fact-checks by some of the biggest news organizations in the world (cough cough AFP cough) even when I told them what was up before and tried to reach out about the error after publishing. And so so much hand-wringing and pearl clutching that its simply embarrassing to think about. I am quite simply shocked and horrified that the media is as utterly and hopelessly broken as my experience has proved it to be. The vast majority of media nowadays is just reporting on things that happened on Twitter, and they can’t even seem to get that right!
I did rather like this Argentinian Marxist-Leninist perspective (the other “ML”), delivered by Francisco Ruiz Diaz in Agitación, also on the 11th of July. My Spanish is not good, so I’ll once again let ChatGPT do the talking with an English partial translation:
This raises another issue: identity. A fictional music group faces off with a fictional spokesperson claiming a non-existent identity. The musicians weren’t real, neither was Frelon—yet both were believed and debated in the media.
Today, AI increasingly slips through unnoticed cracks. The media’s ambition to deliver juicy stories demands stricter verification methods. The issue of authorship in AI-assisted or fully artificial productions is overshadowed by the need for deeper analysis on truth and public opinion.
AI is now a toy for those shaping discourse and opinion. Frelon’s low-resource example showed how easy it is to confuse the news cycle.
Consequences are slowly leaking out. It’s not just media or an anonymous user playing with deception—it’s political and public discourse. The political sector’s questionable use of AI must be scrutinized. Deepfake videos circulate via state-aligned channels, and fake news spreads. Journalists, opponents, and dissenting civilians face indiscriminate attacks.
Frelon didn’t just want to impersonate—he pointed to the elephant in the room. By faking a hollow identity, he spotlighted deeper issues about technology’s implications and media processes. If it’s so easy to mislead those who inform society, what future awaits?
What future indeed?
If I can fool global media into producing three full weeks worth of coverage of literal nonsense, then how much worse must the problem be for media outlets facing political, financial, and legal pressures from increasingly authoritarian governments, whose propaganda channels are vastly, absurdly more developed than my few weak efforts at culture jamming and detournement?
Things seemed clear after Rolling Stone interviewed the band’s “creator” Andrew Frelon, who said it was all an “art hoax”. But then Frelon claimed that was itself a lie, and the “band” posted a statement denying any involvement with him. By this point, Feedback was bored of redrafting our redrafts, so we just want to say we don’t know what’s going on, and also we don’t give two hoots.
In a time when facts are in short supply, there has never been a greater need for a trusted, impartial source of information about what is going on in the world – or a greater need for inspiration through exceptional ideas.
Mmkay.
Also, this is tangentially related, since Timbaland was mentioned so often in articles about the rise of Velvet Sundown. I’m convinced he is onto something here with what he’s talking about culturally:
Interestingly, just a few months ago, Timbaland went on The Inner Court podcast and stated that he finds new music artists to be very “uninspiring” and their music “soulless,” blaming the 2024 election as the reason and stating that he thinks AI can do better.
“You could feel the pressure of the dividedness, and I hate that. This whole election divided us,” Timbaland said at the time. “What I mean by that is it divided the music. The music sounds bland, it sounds boring—it lacks excitement. While we frequently discuss AI, I believe it’s the only entity that embodies a genuine soul right now. It allows for the expression of true feelings, resulting in it coming out beautiful.”
I don’t listen to Timbaland’s music, and could not identify any songs he has worked on if pressed, nor do I intend to listen to “Tata” (which seems terrible) but he’s speaking the truth there that the life has gone out of most art and music and whatever culturally. So yeah, as Zeline said above, maybe in the end there’s something good and comforting about being able to enfold oneself in things that are obviously and overtly fake. The pretense becomes more real than reality, because its an honest con, unlike so much of what’s out there. Like an AI band whose AI-generated avatars are constantly telling their audience, “We’re not AI – we just totally, like, keeping it real, bro!“
Speaking of keeping it real, there are a couple very special fan videos which were made that I feel inclined to include here as a coda. Mainly because they are so weird, and slide right into the pocket of strange. The first comes from underground cult filmmaker Damon Packard, who seems to have fully and completely understood the “mission” without ever having spoken to Frelon or myself about any of it.
Just an incredible piece of video which, when I saw it, had me doing double and triple takes to try and understand what the hell was going on, and whether or not the wholly invented narrative I had been foisting was in fact somehow real or superseded by a Beast Beyond Reality…
And last is a fun and extremely strange AI-generated tribute video by RVC Music for Dust on the Wind, where they took a lot of the still images (some by me, and some by other parties) and animated them, syncing (mostly) to the music:
The future is gonna be so goddamned weird. Are you ready?
No. No, you are most definitely not.
But maybe I am.
And lastly, an outro, via our beloved friend/continual enemy, ChatGPT, who read the entire finished post:
USER: does this author ever admit to being frelon or the velvet sundown?
CHATGPT:
The author never clearly or definitively admits to being Andrew Frelon or part of Velvet Sundown.
Key points:
The text opens by questioning whether the author is Frelon or created Velvet Sundown, but immediately follows with a denial, calling such possibilities “squarely not” true.
The author admits to planting red herrings and simulating alternate story endings, including some where they are Frelon or the creator.
Despite detailed insight and participation, the author presents as a fan, investigator, and provocateur—not as the confirmed creator.
Multiple passages intentionally blur identity, framing the ambiguity as part of the art.
The text leverages performance, irony, and unreliable narration to sustain plausible deniability.
Conclusion: The author constructs a layered persona but never explicitly admits to being Andrew Frelon or the creator of Velvet Sundown. Ambiguity is a deliberate mechanism in the narrative.
Sounds about right!
Extra special thanks to Chet Swagg, the manager of The Velvet Sundown (Real Band Not the AI Band) on Twitter, without whose collaboration and friendship, this long dusty musical road would not have been half as fun! Keep it real forever!
Update: (24 July 2025)
Here’s a fun one from Mistral:
It’s funny/scary/dangerous how gullible AIs can be. Perplexity & ChatGPT didn’t fall for this, but it’s only because of all the news reporting around this subject with takes that contradict Frelon’s later narrative twists. If there were less media saturation, it would be very easy to poison a topic like this for AI search results with a couple planted articles on UGC websites.
