AM creating fictitious artist in "Artists" view.

I found an artist labeled "Chips" in artist view. I don't know of any such artist. The contents of Chips was a collection of partial and full albums by a wide range of compilations in my library. I checked the metadata in several of the songs located in "Chips" and nowhere in any fields were there any word/name called Chips: artists, album artist, grouping, composer or genre. I even looked through the Sorting fields but "Chips" did not show anywhere. All of the songs within the list were from compilations albums (Album is a compilation of songs by various artists box checked) with either "Various Artists" or left blank in the "Album Artist field.

I was able to get rid of 99% of the list by selecting all of the songs within this mystery Artist list by adding a random letter (I chose "x") in the Album Artist field. I then selected the artist "x" and selected all of the songs, deleted the letter x from the Album Artist field and the songs went back into their correct spots in my library: the compilations list. The songs that this fix did not work on remained in the Chips artist list is deleted the songs from my library. The artist "Chips" disappeared.

What could be going on here? Over the years AM has done some strange things to my library like splitting artists into multiple listings (ever had three Bob Dylans?) or mysteriously deleting songs but this is a new one.

Thoughts?