Annahstasia, Madison Cunningham, and Sarz: The Stars Waging War on AI Music

Mia Reynolds, 12/27/2025Explore the tension between human artistry and AI-generated music in 2025. Highlighting artists like Annahstasia and Madison Cunningham, the article celebrates raw vulnerability in music creation while questioning the authenticity of machine-generated sound. Ultimately, it champions the messy, imperfect beauty of human expression.

Which brings us, not so neatly, to Annahstasia’s “Tether.” This isn’t just a debut; it’s a declaration. It’s as if the album barrels in, dust on its boots, refusing to let go of the splinters. The opening chords of “Silk and Velvet” barely settle before Annahstasia’s voice—smoky, full of velvet grit—draws you in. There’s no carefully posed bravado here. Instead, lines like “Maybe I’m an analyst, an antisocial bitch, who sells her dreams for money” slice with the weariness of someone who’s tangled with the industry, then decided to keep her bruises in plain sight. The songs aren’t just meticulously constructed; they’re vulnerable, carrying the ache of late-night honesty under a porch light, every note a small act of rebellion against sanding away the rough edges.

Madison Cunningham, meanwhile, has been gathering up the scraps left behind by love, turning them over in “Ace” with a quiet sort of defiance—the way someone might run their fingers along a scar, less to mourn than to marvel. The record tracks the lifecycle of a marriage, from grapes crushed underfoot to the debris of separation, setting those memories afloat atop intertwining strings and winds that threaten to lift the roof off the room. The final track, “Best of Us,” sidles up to the notion of faking it—what gives out when the performance reaches its limit? Answers aren’t tied up with a bow; instead, they rattle around in Cunningham’s best work yet, lyrics bristling with restless imagery. A storm doesn’t stop to clarify its point, after all.

Wander farther afield and the sounds get knottier. Sarz, commanding his own proliferating universe on “Protect Sarz at All Costs,” doesn’t simply borrow from genres—he ransacks their closets, stitching together orchestral threads with the earthbound crunch of African percussion, pinning everything in place with streaks of electro-pop. Collaborators seem to appear from every compass point: the Ndlovu Youth Choir, Cameroonian-American Libianca, Theodora. It’s a sonic mosaic that, on first listen, feels nearly chaotic, but that’s just the world now—borderless, unruly. In a landscape flattened by playlists and streaming metrics, Sarz’s fearless collage stands as proof that genuine creativity is stitched together, often with fingers pricked and needle lost somewhere in the couch cushion.

Then there’s Daniel Avery. “Tremor” doesn’t so much announce itself as slink through the cracks, all grease and shadow. The tracks coil and unspool like a subterranean current—grimy, playful, a little bit dangerous, the kind of thing that makes a walk at twilight take on an illicit air. It’s music that doesn’t ask permission. Instead, it dares listeners to follow into alleyways thick with distorted textures, reminiscent of if Nine Inch Nails had relocated to London’s underbelly or, maybe, the Deftones decided to record underwater. Avery’s project needs to be experienced in the dark, ideally when the night feels just a bit too long.

But can the human soul—quirky, unpredictable, mistake-prone—really survive the onslaught of machine learning? Jazz might be the best argument that it can. Picture a club in New York around 11pm: the sweat on a trumpeter’s brow, the uneven laughter from the back table, each note never quite the same as the last. No AI, no matter how cleverly programmed, can duplicate the hesitation before a solo lands, the fraught silence when a player risks everything on a single note. Maybe some genres, with their scruffy improvisational lineage, serve as living proof that what’s flawed is what’s divine.

Across the world, there’s a similar struggle playing out—one that’s as much about cultural survival as sonic fidelity. In Papua New Guinea, local artists like Mal Meninga Kuri aren’t fighting nostalgia; they’re battling the erosion of musical identity under waves of AI-generated covers. When a song can be replicated endlessly by an app, what’s left of the voice that first sang it—especially when that voice was meant to mean something? It’s not simply a battle for economic livelihood in 2025; it’s about who gets to own the story.

Looking ahead (and 2025’s only just begun, so who knows how wild it’ll get), the stakes keep shifting. Maybe the records that echo the loudest will be the ones that wear their creation process right on the sleeve—the jagged, ambitious experiments, and the old-school purists who insist on the groan of real wood and wires. There’s a cleverness to the current talk of “authentication”: a push to separate the authentic, sweat-drenched from the clever imitation. We’re not just rating a track by its catchiness anymore. We want to see the proof. Did a human hand really struggle over this chord change, or did clever code spit out the harmony in a blink?

All things considered, music’s most startling gift isn’t its polish or predictability but its capacity for scars. In Naples, electronic soundscapes crackle with unfinished possibility. Listen to Lupu’s posthumous piano lines, every note a whispered argument with eternity, and it becomes clear—perfection is overrated and human frailty, paradoxically, is what lasts.

Perhaps the truest measure of music’s worth these days isn’t some algorithm’s endorsement, but the shiver before a note lands—or fails to. Maybe, in the end, what draws us back isn’t the spotless choruses or digital finesse, but the beautiful mess left in the wake of creation. Here’s to the songs that bleed through the mix, to the voices that quiver rather than auto-tune, to the tension that never quite resolves.

Scars and all.

There’s an odd hum beneath the surface of playlists this year, something just slightly off-kilter. Maybe it’s the persistent fretwork of algorithms, churning out songs with a precision that’s a little too clean—like a meal that’s technically flawless, every spice measured, yet missing that pinch of accidental brilliance that used to make music feel alive. If you’ve ever found yourself transfixed by a jazz saxophonist chasing the tail of a phrase, notes tumbling out a breath before they’re caught, you’ll know what’s threatened by this relentless digital polish.Which brings us, not so neatly, to Annahstasia’s “Tether.” This isn’t just a debut; it’s a declaration. It’s as if the album barrels in, dust on its boots, refusing to let go of the splinters. The opening chords of “Silk and Velvet” barely settle before Annahstasia’s voice—smoky, full of velvet grit—draws you in. There’s no carefully posed bravado here. Instead, lines like “Maybe I’m an analyst, an antisocial bitch, who sells her dreams for money” slice with the weariness of someone who’s tangled with the industry, then decided to keep her bruises in plain sight. The songs aren’t just meticulously constructed; they’re vulnerable, carrying the ache of late-night honesty under a porch light, every note a small act of rebellion against sanding away the rough edges.Madison Cunningham, meanwhile, has been gathering up the scraps left behind by love, turning them over in “Ace” with a quiet sort of defiance—the way someone might run their fingers along a scar, less to mourn than to marvel. The record tracks the lifecycle of a marriage, from grapes crushed underfoot to the debris of separation, setting those memories afloat atop intertwining strings and winds that threaten to lift the roof off the room. The final track, “Best of Us,” sidles up to the notion of faking it—what gives out when the performance reaches its limit? Answers aren’t tied up with a bow; instead, they rattle around in Cunningham’s best work yet, lyrics bristling with restless imagery. A storm doesn’t stop to clarify its point, after all.Wander farther afield and the sounds get knottier. Sarz, commanding his own proliferating universe on “Protect Sarz at All Costs,” doesn’t simply borrow from genres—he ransacks their closets, stitching together orchestral threads with the earthbound crunch of African percussion, pinning everything in place with streaks of electro-pop. Collaborators seem to appear from every compass point: the Ndlovu Youth Choir, Cameroonian-American Libianca, Theodora. It’s a sonic mosaic that, on first listen, feels nearly chaotic, but that’s just the world now—borderless, unruly. In a landscape flattened by playlists and streaming metrics, Sarz’s fearless collage stands as proof that genuine creativity is stitched together, often with fingers pricked and needle lost somewhere in the couch cushion.Then there’s Daniel Avery. “Tremor” doesn’t so much announce itself as slink through the cracks, all grease and shadow. The tracks coil and unspool like a subterranean current—grimy, playful, a little bit dangerous, the kind of thing that makes a walk at twilight take on an illicit air. It’s music that doesn’t ask permission. Instead, it dares listeners to follow into alleyways thick with distorted textures, reminiscent of if Nine Inch Nails had relocated to London’s underbelly or, maybe, the Deftones decided to record underwater. Avery’s project needs to be experienced in the dark, ideally when the night feels just a bit too long.But can the human soul—quirky, unpredictable, mistake-prone—really survive the onslaught of machine learning? Jazz might be the best argument that it can. Picture a club in New York around 11pm: the sweat on a trumpeter’s brow, the uneven laughter from the back table, each note never quite the same as the last. No AI, no matter how cleverly programmed, can duplicate the hesitation before a solo lands, the fraught silence when a player risks everything on a single note. Maybe some genres, with their scruffy improvisational lineage, serve as living proof that what’s flawed is what’s divine.Across the world, there’s a similar struggle playing out—one that’s as much about cultural survival as sonic fidelity. In Papua New Guinea, local artists like Mal Meninga Kuri aren’t fighting nostalgia; they’re battling the erosion of musical identity under waves of AI-generated covers. When a song can be replicated endlessly by an app, what’s left of the voice that first sang it—especially when that voice was meant to mean something? It’s not simply a battle for economic livelihood in 2025; it’s about who gets to own the story.Looking ahead (and 2025’s only just begun, so who knows how wild it’ll get), the stakes keep shifting. Maybe the records that echo the loudest will be the ones that wear their creation process right on the sleeve—the jagged, ambitious experiments, and the old-school purists who insist on the groan of real wood and wires. There’s a cleverness to the current talk of “authentication”: a push to separate the authentic, sweat-drenched from the clever imitation. We’re not just rating a track by its catchiness anymore. We want to see the proof. Did a human hand really struggle over this chord change, or did clever code spit out the harmony in a blink?All things considered, music’s most startling gift isn’t its polish or predictability but its capacity for scars. In Naples, electronic soundscapes crackle with unfinished possibility. Listen to Lupu’s posthumous piano lines, every note a whispered argument with eternity, and it becomes clear—perfection is overrated and human frailty, paradoxically, is what lasts.Perhaps the truest measure of music’s worth these days isn’t some algorithm’s endorsement, but the shiver before a note lands—or fails to. Maybe, in the end, what draws us back isn’t the spotless choruses or digital finesse, but the beautiful mess left in the wake of creation. Here’s to the songs that bleed through the mix, to the voices that quiver rather than auto-tune, to the tension that never quite resolves.Scars and all.