It’s been a busy year for Hatsune Miku, the world’s most famous holographic pop star. The teal-haired performer wrapped up her first North American tour this spring, selling out stops from Los Angeles to New York. In her native Japan, she made her Kabuki debut, and found the time to model Givenchy dresses for Vogue, and she still has her annual two-day solo concert in Tokyo this September. Originally conceived as the avatar for a singing-synthesizer software called Vocaloid, Miku has become a phenomenon all her own, attracting both “wacky Japan” reactions and more serious praise. She’s far from a household name, but has attracted a massive fan base and coverage internationally.
She’s achieved a lot, but her success wasn’t a sudden development. Hatsune Miku isn’t the first effort at creating a virtual idol, a non-human performer independent from existing franchises or artists (also, not a hip-hop-ified cat acting as sidekick). Music labels and 3D designers spent nearly two decades trying to create a computer-generated star capable of everything a flesh-and-blood act could do—but free of human limitations, such as fatigue or getting caught in scandals. Miku eventually achieved that dream, but only after a lot of uncanny valley failure paved the way for her modern-day success.
Kyoko Date
Efforts to create a virtual idol in Japan started in the 1990s, as the quality of 3D modeling software improved and the character Shiori Fujisaki—from the 1994 dating simulator Tokimeki Memorial—experienced massive popularity. Talent agency Horipro went all in on a computer-generated pop star in 1995, putting together a large staff (and investing millions of dollars) to create a new type of talent for the digital age. Kyoko Date was the final product, and the first majorly publicized attempt at a virtual idol.
Horipro aimed to make Date as realistic as possible, recording muscle movement from human models while also giving the fledgling digital pop star a detailed, relatable backstory. She grew up in a suburb, worked a part-time job, and counts “learning foreign languages” and “collecting sneakers” as hobbies. Despite her physical self being completely computer created, Date still required two human voice actors to provide her singing and speaking voice.
After lengthy delays, Horipro announced Date to the public in May 1996, sparking a media frenzy, including small features in Western publications such as Entertainment Weekly and SPIN. Further delays deflated excitement, but Date went ahead doing radio appearances and, later that year, releasing the song “Love Communication,” a number that didn’t sound much different than the upbeat J-pop made by human contemporaries Namie Amuro or Tomomi Kahala. The single came with a music video that found the singer walking the streets of New York and Tokyo, while also delivering dance moves that, in 2016, look extremely clunky, but might have been impressive in 1996, in a “hey, this is a start” sort of way.
The lag between Date’s debut and the release of “Love Communication,” though, resulted in little interest in the song or the digital performer, and sales floundered. Horipro also squandered international attention: Around the same time “Love Communication” went on sale, America found their own digital idol to fall for in Lara Croft, of the Tomb Raider video games. Most telling, though, was the aforementioned Shiori Fujisaki releasing her debut single “Oshiete Mr. Sky” weeks after Date’s. The anime character’s song easily outsold “Love Communication.” While Date had been designed to be achingly human and reminiscent of existing pop acts, consumers actually wanted something they had never seen before.
Adam
Whereas Horipro poured lots of resources and money into their virtual idol, the South Korean music industry’s first attempt emerged from a much smaller project. A company called Adamsoft began work on the first male digital artist in 1996, and unveiled Adam near the end of 1997. The singer appeared just as unsettling as Kyoko Date—as many early CGI attempts at creating humans ended up—but managed to achieve far more in his brief window of popularity. He released two albums comprised mostly of melancholy ballads (with a few bouncy moments mixed in), while also starring in multiple ads for a lemon soda. Adam also managed to look incredibly sad for a beta-version Sim.
Adam ushered in a Korean boom for virtual pop stars—or, at least, an effort to make virtual pop stars a trend, as it’s tough to tell how long most of these digi-performers lasted in the limelight. After Adam came Lusia, Cyda, and many more. Even Kyoko Date made a play for the Korean market, debuting in 1999 as DiKi and releasing an entire album’s worth of material. Date’s push into Korea also resulted in another milestone: She became the first Japanese artist to release a CD in Korea following a 53-year-old ban on the country’s culture.
Still, it didn’t last, and fizzled for the same reasons Date’s Japanese career did: Why would anyone opt for a crudely rendered pop star with a human singing voice when the real deal is available in spades? Another potential stumbling block was just how much background info each character was given. Adam had a long list of statistics and likes, ranging from favorite artists (Eric Clapton) to movie preferences (he finds Taxi Driver interesting). It stifles the imagination—and turns unique pop creations into something kinda boring. Soon, though, people creating virtual idols would learn to embrace a lack of information.
Yuki Terai
For the most part, Yuki Terai was a less interesting Kyoko Date. Appearing initially in 1997 but reaching peak visibility at the turn of the century, Terai performed pop songs, starred in toothpaste ads, and released music video compilations. And like Date, she had a brief time in the spotlight before fading out.
But the company that created Terai, eFrontier, also sold the data behind Terai to users, who then could fiddle around with the information in the 3D modeling software Poser. Suddenly, fans could create their own versions of the character, and put their personal spin on her. Soon, this element of a virtual idol would collide with a fledgling technology to produce the first real success story.
Meiko
Ironically, the idea for Vocaloid software emerged from a project to make actual humans sound better. In the mid ‘90s, Japan’s Yamaha teamed up with researchers at Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra university to work on a project code named “Elvis,” a voice morphing technology intended for use during karaoke. Bad singers would suddenly sound great. Ultimately, the project finished without a realized product, but the findings from that time were applied in the creation of a singing-synthesizer software meant to offer the most realistic sounding computer-generated voice possible.
Vocaloid went on sale in 2004, allowing users to create their own digital singers thanks to detailed sound banks. The first three versions of the software could generate English-language voices, and were named Leon, Lola and Miriam—but the boxes for each product were minimalist in design, featuring only male and female lips. Yet the first Japanese-language offering, from Crypton Future Media later that year, managed the most success of all by putting a young anime woman in red clothes named Meiko on the packaging.
Meiko moved around 3000 copies, far more than any of the other initial offerings, and set the template Hatsune Miku would use to become massive. Meiko looked like a Japanese cartoon character, which proved far more appealing to general audiences than stabs at humanity. She didn’t have any background information to bog users down with. And, most importantly, control of what she sang and the music her voice appeared over was completely up to the owners of the software to decide.
Although her success was modest, Meiko allowed designers at Crypton Future Media to see what had worked with a digital singer, and highlighted them with Hatsune Miku. She was made to look more anime-ish and a cartoon voice actor brought in to record her sound bank, while the character herself was given a sliver more info, such as age and height. Yet the rest of Miku was left blank—and Crypton encouraged users to imagine her however they liked and to share them with the world. Despite being designed to sound like a human, those who bought the software embraced its digital side; some of the most popular Vocaloid songs retain a distinct electronic edge. It took a lot of missteps, but with Miku, the idea of a virtual idol came to fruition.
