doCountless billowing green wigs risked spontaneous combustion on a 36-degree night in Melbourne as thousands of J-pop fans queued outside John Cain Arena on Friday night. But the heat was irrelevant for the night’s headline pop attraction, Hatsune Miku. He can’t sweat because he’s a digital animation: a 16-year-old virtual “Vocaloid” pop star on his first tour of Australia.
Miku, as she is known to fans, is a 157cm tall avatar of a teenage girl with green pigtails. It represents a digital bank of vocal samples created by ominous-sounding Crypton Future Media using Yamaha’s Vocaloid voice synthesizer technology. Users enter lyrics and melodies that are “sung” by the bank’s sampled voice (Hatsune Miku’s voice is by actor Saki Fujita); some Vocaloid producers “tune” the software to make it especially convincing, while others embrace its artificiality.
Inside the arena, Miku appeared on an LED screen, sending the crowd into a paradoxically controlled frenzy. Most of the attendees remained seated, directing their energy into synchronizing the movement of their fists with the battery-powered colored glow sticks they had purchased. Miku herself is disconcertingly life-sized, dancing to a live band, and dwarfed by a colossal, seizure-inducing lighting rig. Speaking in Japanese-accented English, she addressed the crowd directly, leaving spaces for the audience to respond as if she were a real, spontaneous performer.
“Thank you all for making this such a special night.” Laughter. “I hope you had a good time.” More screams. “See you soon!” You get the idea.
Vocaloid songs are now so popular in Japan that they frequently enter (and sometimes even top) the country’s major pop charts, with Billboard is even creating a Vocaloid-specific music chart, Niconico. Since its release in 2007, Miku’s first demo, 01_balladhas spawned over 100,000 songs, largely created by fans, mostly generated by Japan’s otaku community: obsessive fans who often direct their devotion to characters rather than celebrities. Miku is so big that she has opened for Lady Gaga, played at Coachella, and been remixed by Pharrell Williams.
Other characters topping the charts based on different voice banks include Kagamine Rin and Megurine Luka, who make surprise appearances at Miku’s concert in Melbourne, making fans excited.
While many in Melbourne are dressed as Miku, her fans are known for creating new Miku designs that correspond to specific personality traits they would like to see her embody. Or brands: I see a “Bunnings Miku” and meet Olivia, who has come dressed in a handmade supermarket worker uniform like “Woolies Miku.” This may seem strange, but it is strangely appropriate for a heavily commercialized subculture; A recent survey by Live Nation of Australian ticket buyers found that Asian pop fans spend 138% more per ticket order than the general public, and 85% purchase merchandise.
“The whole idea with Vocaloids is that it’s a gift to the fans. It’s the fans who make this what it is,” Olivia said. “There is such a great community around it. It is something that we are together.”
For some fans, the concert is a fun, low-risk opportunity to explore identity. Tori, 19, wore a short green wig, shirt, and tie like Mikuo, a gender-swapped male version.
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“I’m trans, I just feel more comfortable (dressed this way). I love music, I love it as an instrument, I find its technology incredible,” they said. “I feel like a lot of nerdy people, trans people, people who don’t feel like they fit in, connected to that.”
Vocaloid software is not, in its origin, related to artificial intelligence. But their deceptive imitation has long been a harbinger of today’s generative AI models, which in a step back have been trained on artists’ voices, often without permission or compensation. Open source pop is about to break into the mainstream. After emulations of Drake and The Weeknd emerged last year, Grimes announced that artists could use AI representations of their voice in exchange for a 50-50 royalty split.
But in many ways, despite its perpetual adolescence and cutting-edge technology, Miku is now a legacy act with a list of classic hits. Some have been fans for almost 20 years, like Kon, 36, a Miku fan since 2008, who let out the kind of screams that permanently alter your vocal cords as Miku performed her hit. The world is mine.
“Miku has a special place in my heart. “I had Miku before I had a job, before I had my family, before I had kids,” Kon said, his cloudy eyes shining under the house lights as the toupee shuffled out.
“She is the embodiment of what you need in life, when you meet her, when you meet her. The songs stay with you. It transcends time.”