Get ready for a day just like any other, because we’ve learned that a soulless, pre-programmed, one-dimensional pop star is going on tour. Of course, unlike 75 percent of the other pop stars on the Billboard Top 200, this singer has a good excuse. Gizmodo reports that Hatsune Miku, a Japanese “virtual pop star,” is going on a short tour of the U.S. and Canada in 2016. Presumably, Katy Perry is in a blind rage right now after not getting the response she was hoping for this morning when asking her vanity mirror, “Who’s the most manufactured singer of all?”
Miku is a computer-generated hologram made from software known as Vocaloid, which produces a human-sounding singing voice without using any actual human sounds in its creation. Its Facebook page (which currently boasts more than 2.5 million fans) describes Miku as a “virtual singer who can sing any song that anybody composes,” which is like bragging that your butterfly net can hold any butterfly in existence, but okay. Lady Gaga fans might be familiar, given this assemblage of ones and zeroes opened for the American pop singer last summer.
Worth noting is the fact that Miku is essentially a mascot for Crypton Future Media, the company that makes Vocaloid, and there’s no plan to turn her into a cartoon series hero or give her any sort of fake backstory. The company is very open about her lack of material existence, and all songs she performs are written by users of the software, and most of her music videos are solely the work of fans. The tour dates aren’t finalized, but all confirmed ones are below, right after this clip we found of the computer program performing on Letterman.
Hatsune Miku 2016 tour:
April 23—WaMu Theater—Seattle, WA
April 30—The Warfield—San Francisco, CA
May 6—Microsoft Theater—Los Angeles, CA
May 14—The Bomb Factory—Dallas, TX
May 20—Sony Centre for the Performing Arts—Toronto, Canada
May 28—Hammerstein Ballroom—New York, NY