Viral blues singer at top of UK charts revealed to be AI

The blues appear to have lost their soul as a viral song that skyrocketed to the top of UK charts is revealed to be totally AI-generated.

Eddie Dalton's song Another Day Old peaked at No. 2 and No. 3 on the official UK singles chart but it has been revealed that Dalton's velvet voice is actually just lines of generated code.

Marketed as a black American blues maestro, pictured on album covers as a man with a weathered face singing in dimly lit, smoky rooms, Another Day Old is a soulful meditation on aging.

It's in a similar style to Otis Redding or Marvin Gaye and has more than half a million streams on Spotify. He has more than 460,000 monthly listeners on the music streaming app, with several other songs, like Running To You, garnering over a million views.

Dalton appears to be the most successful creation of Crusty Records - a company which has created a number of fake AI-generated artists and has amassed millions of views across Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and other platforms.

Their website says they 'specialise in building distinctive artist brands', and that their 'catalogue showcases the future of sound.'

Some of their 'artists' are more obvious fakes - spoofing the country music genre with foul-mouthed AI-generated songs, released under the artist name Biscuit Beats.

One song has been streamed nearly six million times, while another has more than 2.3million on Spotify, and the faux artist has over 165,000 monthly listeners.

Critics are suspicious that these massive streaming numbers have been manipulated using bots in streaming farms, given the obvious use of AI to make this music.

Spotify said on its website: 'As streaming payouts have grown to billions of dollars per year, bad actors have started trying to manipulate streams for their own financial gain, or to scam artists by promising increased stream counts in exchange for money.'

Dalton is not the first AI character to make his way into the charts. In 2025 Solomon Ray, a supposed Christian singer, stormed to the top of the iTunes top 100 Christian and gospel albums.

Other Crusty Records AI artists include Cain Walker - another country singer with an apparently massive audience. His top ten songs all have at least 1.9million streams, with his most famous one being I Don't Care with more than 9million.

They also have more comedic characters on the roster like Cody Crotchburn.

Last July, millions were fooled by an AI-generated indie band 'The Velvet Sundown' on Spotify with their hit Dust on the Wind which has more than 4.4million streams on Spotify.

The Musicians' Union is campaigning to defend real artists' copyright against being used by AI models without consent.

Their website said: 'Tech firms should not be able to use your music to train their artificial intelligence (AI) models without your consent.

'Big tech companies want to use songs, recordings and other creative works to train their AI models for commercial purposes without asking or paying the original creators or rights holders.

'The MU is fighting for consent, credit and fair compensation for all creators for the use of their work to train AI models.'

While AI is behind these mysterious music stars, there is also a much more subdued part of the computer-generated music.

AI is being used to generate bland shopping-centre Muzak to be used as background noise.

Mubert, the music generation site, advertises this service free on its website, stating: 'Love it or hate it, Muzak helps set the mood of the space you're visiting and removes all the awkward silences between conversations.

'But, to play Muzak over the establishment's sound system, reputable businesses have to pay royalties to the creators.

'Now, artificial intelligence – which is already affecting much of our daily lives – has come to the extensive world of background music.'

The Daily Mail has contacted Crusty Records for a comment.