Angèle

Angèle Van Laeken (born 1995 in Brussels) became Francophone pop’s defining new voice with her 2018 debut “Brol” and the feminist anthem “Balance ton quoi,” later reaching global audiences on Dua Lipa’s “Fever.” In August 2023 she became the center of French pop’s first great AI voice-cloning story.

The clone that joined the setlist

Beatmaker Lnkhey used AI to replace the vocals of Gazo and Heuss L’Enfoiré’s drill hit “Saiyan” with Angèle’s voice. The fake cover exploded across TikTok and YouTube, racking up millions of plays. Her first reaction, posted to TikTok, was ambivalent — she said she did not know what to think of artificial intelligence, finding it insane (“une dinguerie”) but admitting she feared for her profession.

Then she leaned in. On September 17, 2023, closing her “Nonante-Cinq” tour at the Fête de l’Humanité near Paris, Angèle sat at the piano and performed “Saiyan” for real — asking the crowd why she should not do what fans had been demanding for weeks, and telling Lnkhey she “could not not sing it” for the finale. Fans declared the song hers; the AI cover had effectively commissioned a human performance.

The episode became a reference point in the French debate over voice cloning: an unauthorized deepfake that ended not in a takedown but in an artist reclaiming — and improving on — the machine’s suggestion.