Joe Bonamassa defends artists who use Suno, but draws the line at AI blues singer Eddie Dalton

Joe Bonamassa doesn’t care if you use Suno to write a lyric. He cares if an AI singer sits in the same category as him.

“If someone uses Suno to write a lyric, okay, it’s not a high crime, a misdemeanor,” the blues guitarist told Blues Rock Review at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival in Austin, in an interview published October 3, 2026. He added that he has never used it himself.

The part he does object to has a name: Eddie Dalton.

What Joe Bonamassa said about Suno and the honor system

Bonamassa thinks AI use is already far wider than most musicians will say out loud. “Everybody’s on the honor system,” he said, pointing to artists getting called out for using AI on their lyrics.

And he gets why young artists reach for Suno, because getting noticed is the hardest part of the job right now.

“If I can use this program to get a leg up and maybe I get a few more people out of my show, you know that’s happening,” he said. “We’d be very remiss to just bury our head in the sand, say it’s not, because it is.”

He’s also relaxed about listeners. “When people want to zone out, and they want to put music on in the car, if they like AI music, that’s 100% their right,” he said. “This is a supply and demand business.”

The full interview is here:

Why Joe Bonamassa draws the line at Eddie Dalton

When the interviewer brought up AI, Bonamassa turned the question around. “Do you know who Eddie Dalton is?” he asked. “Never seen him play live, never met him.”

Eddie Dalton is an AI blues and soul act that started releasing music in March 2026. Bonamassa’s chart claim checks out: Dalton’s album The Years Between debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Blues Albums chart in April and has spent 25 weeks there. Dalton has a run on SIQA’s separate AI chart too.

“He’s a legitimate artist in the eyes of some,” Bonamassa said. Then he got to the part that bothers him.

“

Should those artists be in the same category as living people out there? No. That's a horrible thing.

That’s the same split Kelly Clarkson asked for last week: use AI if you want, just don’t put AI artists on the same chart as humans.

There’s one wrinkle. Eddie Dalton’s creator, Dallas Little, told Showbiz 411 in March that “all of the songs are written by me”, and Apple Music credits Little as the songwriter. So the act Bonamassa calls out may be built the way he says is fine: human lyrics, AI voice.