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We Are Charlie Kirk
2025 AI-generated song by Spalexma From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"We Are Charlie Kirk" is a presumably AI-generated song credited to Spalexma, which was released on September 16, 2025. It is a gospel 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.
![Thumb](#/media/File:"We_are_Charlie_Kirk"_song_cover.png)
"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. The song was soon used in other video commemorations to Kirk, and as an accompaniment to various ironic memes, including photos and videos of Kirk's face edited onto other pop cultural figures' heads, referred to as "Kirkified" images. "We Are Charlie Kirk" has been used in over 72,000 TikTok videos.
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Background
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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, and critics focused on the more controversial aspects of his legacy.[6][7][8][9] Internet memes making light of Kirk's death went viral on platforms such as Twitter.[3][10][11]
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 Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. These AI programs have been blamed 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] Some of the social media content either commemorating or criticizing his legacy appears to be AI-generated.[12][18][19][20][21]
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Song
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On September 16, 2025, six days after Kirk's assassination, "We Are Charlie Kirk" was uploaded onto music streaming services, credited to Spalexma.[22] 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".[17][22] Spalexma began being credited with publishing music in May 2024.[23] "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.[17][22][24] It was initially uploaded as the final song on 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 as a martyr who "lived for Jesus", and encourages supporters to continue that religious legacy.[19][22][24][21]
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Reception
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Critical reception
"We Are Charlie Kirk" was panned by media outlets, with several writers labelling it as "slop".[19][24][26] 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.".[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".[27][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; some listeners may have believed the videos were real, and this may be the partial reason behind the song's success.[29][24] 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:[27]
"[...] 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 legitimate news about the assassination, there was a high likelihood they would receive videos featuring "We Are Charlie Kirk" instead.[27]
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."[27]
After ViVO Tunes, the song 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 those criticizing the song and its noticeable AI "accent". It was attached to many TikTok 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 were edited to be replaced with Kirk's, colloquially known as "Kirkified" images.[20][26] Harrison Brocklehurst wrote that many of these 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 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.[19]
The song was soon placed at the top of Spotify's "Viral 50 - Global" playlist of charting viral songs—both in the US and globally—which increased its reach. 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 week of December 6, 2025, "We Are Charlie Kirk" debuted at number 26 on the Billboard Hot Christian Songs chart.[32] The following week, it reached its peak position of No. 21.[33]
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Charts
See also
- "Charlie", a political hip-hop song by rapper Tom MacDonald
- "Jesus Is Coming Back Soon", a pop/rock song by Forrest Frank and Josiah Queen
References
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