(November 20, 2025) – The new Hot 100 was released on Wednesday, November 18 (a day later than normal for reasons unknown). Taylor Swift continues to top the list with “The Fate of Ophelia” from her No. 1 album The Life of a Showgirl.
But the real story this week isn’t at the top of the chart. It’s the song that should be in the middle of it, but isn’t.
A new track called “I Run” by a virtual act named HAVEN amassed enough sales, streams, and radio points (thanks to its viral TikTok status) to debut somewhere in the low 60s, according to a reliable data account with an accuracy rate around 99%. Yet it’s nowhere to be found, likely because it was created using artificial intelligence — as recently confirmed by the song’s producer, UK’s Harrison Walker.
Curious, DJROBBLOG found this lyric video on YouTube (Spotify, Apple Music, and other streamers have since removed the track, although it is still available for sale on iTunes). Give it a listen below:
It’s a glossy, dance-driven track with bright synths and a slightly retro bounce—a song that’s part-EDM/ part house festival warmup. It even features a named singer — Kaitlin Aragon (a real singer with her own website?) — although producer Walker has claimed the vocals are his, heavily manipulated to sound unrecognizable as a female. Apparently, Walker and his team are working to reinstate the song on streaming platforms given his claim. And whether we like it or not, the tune did earn enough chart points to matter this week.
So why the block?
Billboard hasn’t issued a new formal rule that we’ve found, but its actions appear to reflect a philosophical stance: The Hot 100 is meant to track the consumption of real human artists. In contrast, genre lists like Hot R&B Songs, Country Digital Song Sales, and Hot Gospel Songs have already made room for AI-created acts:
• Xania Monet, created by Mississippi poet Telisha Nikki Jones using Suno, became the first AI act to debut on a Billboard chart with real radio airplay.
• Breaking Rust hit No. 1 on the Country Digital Song Sales chart earlier this month with “Walk My Walk.”
• Billboard even acknowledged to ABC News this month that at least six AI acts have charted in just “the past few months.”
Yet “I Run” — which would have been the first AI song to genuinely grace the main U.S. pop chart — is held back.
A recent study showed that 97% of listeners cannot distinguish an AI-generated track from one created with traditional digital tools. That blurs the line even more: If humans can’t tell the difference, should the charts?
And what happens next?
Several questions now hang over the chart world:
• What if an AI-generated song goes viral and earns enough points to reach No. 1?
Remember: the last time Billboard removed a song from a major chart (Old Town Road from Hot Country Songs in 2019), public backlash helped turn it into the longest-running No. 1 in Hot 100 history.
• What if a human artist uses AI to recreate a younger version of themselves?
If someone like Mariah Carey used generative tools to restore her five-octave whistle register from 1990 — and scored a massive hit — would Billboard block that?
• Are Grammys next?
The Recording Academy has said a human must be involved in the creative process for eligibility. But what if that human is the prompt writer? The producer? The coder? Is that less egregious than the permanent stain on Grammys’ legacy that is Milli Vanilli (congrats, btw, Fab Morvan on his recent Grammy nomination for, what else, an audio book about Milli Vanilli).
Jones — Monet’s creator — put it plainly in her Apple Music bio: Xania Monet is “an AI figure presented as a contemporary R&B vocalist in the highly expressive, church-bred, down-to-earth vein of Keyshia Cole, K. Michelle, and Muni Long.” In other words: a fictional artist, dreamed up by a real one, now functioning alongside human performers in the digital space.
So what should Billboard do? Embrace the future? Protect the brand? Draw a new line? Or admit that the line disappeared the moment anyone with a laptop could mimic a voice convincingly, albeit with the clicks of just a few more prompts.
DJROBBLOG wants to know: Should AI songs be eligible for the Hot 100? And if so, where would you draw the line?
Update: This morning (Nov. 20), Billboard has issued the following statement regarding the omission of “I Run” from this week’s Hot 100: “As a result of the [legal] dispute, the song has also been withheld from the Billboard charts, including the Hot 100, on which some chart prognosticators had predicted it would debut this week.
Billboard reserves the right to withhold or remove titles from appearing on the charts that are known to be involved in active legal disputes related to copyright infringement that may extend to the deletion of such content on digital service providers.”
We’re not sure what legal dispute the song has sparked, but DJROBBLOG will update this article accordingly.
DJRob
DJRob, who uses AI to create some of the images featured on these posts, is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
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