Countless flowing green wigs risked spontaneous combustion on a 36-degree Melbourne evening as thousands of J-pop fans queued outside John Cain Arena on Friday night. But the heat was irrelevant to the night’s headline pop attraction, Hatsune Miku. She can’t sweat because she’s a digital animation – a 16-year-old “Vocaloid” virtual pop-star on her first Australian tour.
Miku, as she’s known to fans, is a 157cm-tall avatar of a teenage girl with green pigtails. She represents a digital bank of vocal samples created by the ominous-sounding Crypton Future Media using Yamaha’s Vocaloid voice synthesiser technology. Users input lyrics and melodies which are “sung” by the bank’s sampled voice (Hatsune Miku is voiced by the actor Saki Fujita); some Vocaloid producers “tune” the software to be especially convincing, while others embrace its artificiality.
Inside the arena, Miku emerged on an LED screen, sending the crowd into a paradoxically controlled frenzy. Most attendees remained seated, directing their energy into synchronising their fist pumping of battery-powered coloured glow sticks they had purchased. Miku herself is disconcertingly life-sized, dancing in time to a live band and dwarfed by a colossal, seizure-inducing lighting rig. Speaking in Japanese-accented English, she addressed the crowd directly, leaving gaps for the audience to respond as if she is a real, spontaneous performer.
“Thank you, everybody, for making this such a special night.” Screams. “I hope you had a good time.” More screams. “See you soon!” You get the idea.
Vocaloid tracks are now so big in Japan that they frequently enter – and sometimes even top – the country’s mainstream pop charts, with Billboard even creating a Vocaloid-specific music chart, Niconico. Since it was released in 2007, Miku’s first demo, 01_ballade, has spawned more than 100,000 largely fan-made songs, mostly generated by Japan’s otaku community – obsessive fans who often direct their devotion to characters over celebrities. Miku is so big, she has opened for Lady Gaga, played at Coachella and been remixed by Pharrell Williams.
Other chart-topping characters based on different voice banks include Kagamine Rin and Megurine Luka – both of whom make surprise appearances at Miku’s concert in Melbourne, sending the fans into raptures.
While many in Melbourne are dressed as Miku, her fans are known for creating new Miku designs that correspond to specific personality traits they’d 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 as “Woolies Miku”. This might seem strange, but it is oddly appropriate for a heavily commercialised subculture; a recent survey by Live Nation of Australian ticket buyers found that Asia pop fans spend 138% more per ticket order than general audiences, and 85% purchase merchandise.
“The whole idea with Vocaloids is that it’s a gift to the fans. It’s the fans who make it what it is,” Olivia said. “There’s such a big community around it. It’s a together thing.”
For some fans, the concert is a fun, low-stakes opportunity to explore identity. Tori, 19, wore a short green wig, shirt and tie as Mikuo, a gender-swapped male iteration.
“I’m trans, I just feel more comfortable [dressed this way]. I love the music, I love her as an instrument, I find the technology of it amazing,” they said. “I feel like a lot of nerdy people, trans people, people who don’t feel they fit in, connected to that.”
Vocaloid software is not, in its origin, related to artificial intelligence. But its deceptive mimicry has long been a harbinger of today’s generative AI models, which in a step backwards have been trained on artists’ voices often without permission or compensation. Open-sourced pop is on the cusp of breaking into the mainstream. After emulations of Drake and the Weeknd emerged last year, Grimes announced that artists could use AI representations of her voice in exchange for a 50-50 royalties split.
But in many ways, despite her perpetual teenagedom and cutting-edge technology, Miku is now a legacy act with a classic hits setlist. Some have been fans for almost 20 years – like 36-year-old Kon, a Miku fan since 2008, who released the kind of screams that permanently alter vocal cords while Miku performed her hit World is Mine.
“Miku has a special part in my heart. I’ve had Miku before I had a job, before I had my family, before I had kids,” said Kon, his misty eyes sparkling under the house lights as the bewigged shuffle out.
“She’s the embodiment of what you need in life, when you know her, when you meet her. The songs stick with you. It transcends time.”
