The Things I Didn’t Say
Xania Monet (Hallwood Media, 2026)
Around a decade ago, much hubbub was being raised about the “fake artists” that were sneaking their way onto unsuspecting Spotify listeners’ algorithmically-generated playlists. Those were simpler times, though, and said “fake artists” were flesh-and-blood humans, just ones that had been paid by Spotify to produce and publish music in-house under “fake” band names (insofar as a band name can be fake, I suppose.)
The times have since gotten much stranger. We now have robots to contend with, and it turns out these machines don’t need to sneak past listeners unaware: They can crack the Billboard radio charts.
This was the case for Xania Monet, an AI music project created by Telisha Jones using the software Suno. Jones writes all of Monet’s lyrics, after which she uses AI to generate the music. In 2025, one such composition, “Let Go, Let God,” peaked at number 3 on Billboard’s Hot Gospel Songs.
Monet’s latest album, The Things I Didn’t Say, is 21 tracks showcasing just how easily AI can game the human listener. Each track is pretty, competently “sung,” with sentimental-inspirational lyrics. It doesn’t sound fake by comparison to any vampy, glossily-produced pop-R&B you might otherwise hear on the radio or an auto-generated Spotify playlist. That something is amiss only becomes clear when the album is played front-to-back, and each song’s eerily similar structure (down to the gentle piano arpeggios and crooning hums that open each one) is impossible to miss.
I have every reason to expect that, as time goes on and Suno updates roll out, these tells in Monet’s music—and in that of myriad other AI artists—will become harder to spot. However, I don’t think that will mean AI has succeeded in fooling us music fans with “fake music.” We’ve been fooled by fake music for decades: All that’ll come of this is a new definition of fake.
This article also appears in the August 2026 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 91, No. 8, page 37). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: From Xania Monet’s The Things I Didn’t Say cover art, AI generated
