We Are Charlie Kirk

, the song's namesake, in 2025|right 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. 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 with the shooting. Conservatives gave an outpouring of praise for Kirk's activism, while many news organizations criticized his positions. Internet memes making light of Kirk's death went viral on platforms such as X. Prior to Kirk's assassination, text, photos, videos, and music developed by generative artificial intelligence programs including ChatGPT had become widespread on online platforms like X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. These AI programs have been blamed for causing these platforms to be filled with perceived low-quality artificial content, nicknamed "AI slop". 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". == Release ==

On September 16, 2025, six days after Kirk's assassination, "We Are Charlie Kirk" was uploaded onto music streaming services, credited to Spalexma. "We Are Charlie Kirk" is one of many songs among their eighteen 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. It was initially uploaded as the final song on an 11-track album titled Charlie Kirk Forever Alive. == Composition ==

"We Are Charlie Kirk" is a song with stylistic similarities to the power ballad genre of the 1980s in a runtime of three minutes and forty-four seconds. Between Kirk's assassination and the song's release, the titular phrase had been used by his supporters. 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. == Reception ==

Critical reception "We Are Charlie Kirk" was panned by media outlets, with several writers labelling it as "AI slop". The song received no positive or mixed reviews. 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." 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 similar to "We Are Charlie Kirk". 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". 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. Viral spread "We Are Charlie Kirk" is one of many songs made to memorialize Kirk after his assassination. Various AI-generated videos that featured celebrity musicians and Erika Kirk, Charlie's widow, singing different songs about Kirk received millions of views on YouTube. Many of the commenters on such videos responded as if these other songs were authentic. ViVO Tunes, a YouTube and TikTok account which posts AI-generated videos of celebrities and conservative personalities singing songs, released an AI-generated video of JD Vance tearfully singing "We Are Charlie Kirk". An X user posted it with the caption: "Accidentally stumbled across this (presumably 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." 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. Harrison Brocklehurst wrote that many of these meme creators found the song genuinely compelling despite their dislike of its lyrical content. He griped that it had widely been ironically attached to videos of "epic" scenarios unrelated to Kirk, such as a "dramatic montage of a fight scene" or a clip from Stranger Things. Commercial performance During its viral spread, the song placed atop Spotify's "Viral 50 - Global" playlist of charting songs, which expanded its reach. It reached its peak position of number 21 the following week. == Charts ==