No. "Raindance" is a human record: Dave featuring Tems, released on 23 October 2025 on Neighbourhood Recordings, track five on Dave's album The Boy Who Played the Harp. Nothing about the song is AI-generated. The confusion comes from the TikTok trend built on it, where people use AI video tools to put themselves on a pier singing along — the AI is in the videos, not the music.
Is Raindance by Dave an AI song?
It is not. Dave is a British rapper and Tems is a Nigerian singer, and "Raindance" is a collaboration between them with human writing, production and vocals. You can check the credits yourself on the song's Wikipedia entry and on Songfacts.
What muddies the water is that search results for "raindance ai" are full of AI tools, AI covers and AI-generated video clips. If the first thing you ever saw of this song was a slightly uncanny video of someone singing it on a dock, "is this AI?" is a reasonable question. The answer is that the video probably was and the song definitely was not.
What is the song Raindance, exactly?
The short version: an afroswing track, 3 minutes 39 seconds long, about love rather than weather. The longer version is in the table.
| Title | Raindance |
| Artists | Dave featuring Tems |
| Released | 23 October 2025 |
| Label | Neighbourhood Recordings |
| Album | The Boy Who Played the Harp, track 5 |
| Genre | Afroswing |
| Length | 3:39 |
The hook everyone knows is not the chorus. It is the bridge, where Tems repeats "I love you" over a sparse beat. That is the section the trend uses, and it is why so many edits are only eight or ten seconds long.
How did Raindance perform on the charts?
It had an unusually long climb. The song debuted at number 5 on the UK singles chart in late October 2025, stayed in rotation through the winter, and then went to number 1 in January 2026 — Dave's fourth UK number one and Tems' first. It also reached the top ten in several other countries and peaked at number 42 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Those three months between the debut and the number one spot matter for understanding the trend. The song was already popular when the TikTok challenge started in December 2025; the challenge then fed back into the chart run and helped push it to the top. A record going to number one two and a half months after release is usually a sign that something outside radio is driving it.
Why is the music video shot on a pier?
Because the official video is where the whole visual language of the trend comes from. It was released on 9 January 2026, directed by Nathan James Tettey and shot in Lagos, Nigeria, with cinematography by Gabriel Moses. It opens on a pier at sunset, golden light scattered across the water, and moves through a formal dinner, an orange-lit room, and a night beach party under string lights (Dork, Neon Music).
Every one of those settings is a real location with a real crew. When people recreate the look with an AI generator, they are copying a human-made video — which is also why the golden-hour pier is the default scene in our generator and the other three scenes mirror the video's other settings.
Why do people think Raindance is an AI song?
Four things, in roughly this order of influence:
- The trend's name. Creators called their clips "raindance AI videos" because the videos were AI-made. Shortened in a caption or a search box, "raindance ai" reads like a description of the song.
- AI covers. There are AI voice covers of "Raindance" on YouTube and TikTok — other artists' voices pasted onto the track, or the track re-sung by a model. These are uploaded by third parties and have nothing to do with Dave, Tems or their label. Hearing one first makes the original sound suspect.
- Sped-up and slowed edits. The sound library is full of pitched variants. A pitched-up vocal can sound synthetic even when it is the original recording.
- The uncanny videos themselves. When you see fifty near-identical clips of different people on the same pier with slightly wrong hands and mouths, it is natural to assume the whole package — song included — was machine-made.
The AI covers are also the reason to stick to the official sound when you post. Pick the Dave and Tems original from the in-app library rather than a cover upload; the sound guide walks through finding the right one and avoiding a copyright mute.
What is AI and what is real in the Raindance trend?
This is the cleanest way to hold it in your head.
| Element | AI or real? |
|---|---|
| The song "Raindance" | Real — written and performed by Dave and Tems |
| The "I love you" bridge vocal | Real — Tems, recorded |
| The official music video | Real — filmed in Lagos with a human crew |
| The Lagos pier in the video | Real location |
| Trend clips of fans singing on a pier | AI-generated video from a still photo |
| The singing you hear in those clips | Real — the licensed song, added in the app |
| The voice "coming out of" the person in the clip | Nothing — the AI clip has no audio at all |
That last row is the one most people get wrong. An AI Raindance clip does not contain a synthesised voice. It is a silent video of a mouth moving; the song is attached separately when the clip is posted. That is why our output is a silent MP4 and why we do not generate vocals of any kind.
Did AI make the official music video?
No. It was directed by Nathan James Tettey and shot on location in Lagos with Gabriel Moses as director of photography. The reason it sometimes gets accused of being AI is the inverse of the usual problem: the golden-hour pier footage looks so much like the AI clips people have been scrolling past that the real thing now reads as generated. The clips copied the video, not the other way round.
Can I make my own Raindance AI video, then?
Yes — of yourself, or of someone who has agreed to it. Upload one photo for a solo clip or two photos for a duet, pick a scene, and you get an 8-second vertical MP4 that opens on a recreation of your photo and cuts to you on the pier singing into the lens. Pets get their own mode at pet Raindance.
Two honest limits. The clip is silent, so you add the official sound yourself in TikTok, Reels or CapCut. And because the model never hears the song, the mouth movement is a soft singing performance rather than frame-accurate lip-sync — the photo guide explains how to make that read naturally. Check both with the free teaser before paying.
What you should not do is generate Dave, Tems, any other public figure, a stranger, or a child. Use your own face or get consent. We are not affiliated with Dave, Tems, their label, TikTok or CapCut — we make the video, you bring the licensed sound.