This album does not exist

If you've never heard of "Tentatively Muttering" by Codie Chargois, there's a reason for that

if you’re hoping to see Codie Chargois live, you’re going to be so disappointed

It’s always good to check out new music, but sometimes there’s more (and less) going on than meets the eye. For example, Codie Chargois’s 2021 album “Tentatively Muttering” would at first glance appear to consist of original songs with titles such as “Cherry Swamp”, “3h AM”, and “It Is Christ Who Strengthens Me”. A quick listen reveals that all of the tracks on “Tentatively Muttering” are actually covers of famous songs, however, adorned with new names that bear no discernible resemblance to the original song titles. A bit of web searching uncovers further evidence of inauthenticity, as “Codie Chargois” does not appear to exist outside of streams of this album, and all of the “Codie Chargois” recordings are plagiarized from an Ohio band named 39 West. Additionally, Codie Chargois is not alone — dozens of other bogus albums from other nonexistent recording artists turn up among the followers of the @ChargoisCodie X account.

yes, the same recording of “Ring of Fire” is on the album twice

In an apparent effort to make the album look like it contains new material, all of the tracks on “Tentatively Muttering” have original titles. As mentioned previously, however, these songs are all covers and can easily be detected as such simply by searching the internet for the lyrics, even if one is not familiar with the original versions. For some reason, the same cover of June Carter Cash’s “Ring of Fire” is included on the album twice, once as “Just Around the Way” and again as “3h AM”.

the “Codie Chargois” songs were actually recorded by Ohio band 39 West

Searching ReverbNation and Soundcloud for covers of the various songs included on “Tentatively Muttering” reveals that all the tracks on the album were actually recorded by New Philadelphia, Ohio country band 39 West. The entire “Codie Chargois” album is simply a collection of plagiarized material from this band, with new track names and cover art slapped on it.

the @ChargoisCodie X account has some interesting followers

Perusing the followers of the official @ChargoisCodie X (formerly Twitter) account turns up some additional oddities. Some of the account’s followers, such as @BaisleyDaron, @AlemanGeneva, @DonaViverette, and @HackerMerlin, have StyleGAN-generated faces as profile images. Others, including @JadeySturiale, @JulisiaTouart, @JaazaniahV, and @RenaldoOdonovan, use album covers as avatars, and some of these alleged albums are available (or were in 2021) on various streaming services. As with Codie Chargois’s “Tentatively Muttering”, these albums consist of plagiarized and renamed material recorded by other musicians, and as with “Codie Chargois”, no independent evidence can be found to corroborate the existence of the artists whose names adorn the plagiarized albums.

when you’re promoting fake content, you need lots of social media accounts

Overall, the social media network associated with this fake album operation consists of at least 609 X accounts, created between March and June 2021 (mostly toward the end of that time frame). 142 of these pose as musical artists and use album covers as profile images; many of these accounts have associated bogus albums on various streaming services. The remaining accounts, which amplify posts from the fake musical artists as well as from real musicians (mostly K-pop artists), have either default avatars (113 accounts) or GAN-generated faces (354 accounts). In the time since this network first became active in 2021, X/Twitter has suspended some, but far from all, of the accounts.

it’s unclear whether “remedember” is a misspelling of “remember” or a fictional month, but it doesn’t really matter since all of this is fake anyway

The original set of bogus albums was released around the same time the associated X (then Twitter) accounts were created, in spring 2021. In the three years since, some of the albums have disappeared from the various streaming services, including the aptly named “Maximum Excrement”, by nonexistent artist “Coulter Haacke”. Some of the albums have been replaced with new albums with 2023 release dates, such Coulter Haacke’s “Night of Madness” and Aydeen Tonner’s “Remedember Her Pride”. Unlike 2021’s flurry of plagiarized tracks, the songs on the new albums are simple electronic loops. The cover art for the 2023 albums appears to be AI-generated, judging by the presence of Bing watermarks on some of the images.

note the Bing logo in the lower left corner

Some of the research in this article was originally presented in abbreviated form in this X/Twitter thread from 2021.