Last week, “Late Show With David Letterman” played host to one of the world’s biggest pop stars, Hatsune Miku. Her long hair nearly reached the floor and she lit up the stage — quite literally. But while the band onstage was real, Miku herself is a hologram.
The performance was her US television debut, and she’s “in town” (as much “in town” as a fictional person can be, that is) this weekend for her New York City live performance debut in two shows at the Hammerstein Ballroom Friday and Saturday.
As you might imagine, she originated in Japan, but she’s performed in front of huge sold-out crowds, at conventions and has legions of fans worldwide. Yet most people in America probably haven’t heard of her. Who is this anime-inspired darling whose fans are very real?
Where did she come from?
Miku is a voice synthesizer program created by Crypton Future Media, first released in 2007. The name “Hatsune Miku” means “the first sound from the future,” and she’s been featured in 100,000 songs that users have created worldwide.
Unlike other voice synthesizers, the company decided to give her a human character, a mix of anime and cyberpunk, in addition to the voice. The company’s official description says she’s 16 years old, 5 feet 2, 92 pounds and specializes in J-pop and dance-pop.
How did she get famous?
The Hatsune Miku software allows users to create open-sourced songs, so people around the world have been creating their own tunes using her voice and likeness, such as this “Call Me Maybe” cover, for instance. People began posting videos of her singing songs to a Japanese YouTube-like site.
Miku started showing up in video games, and bigger artists used her for songs, too. In 2009, she made the leap to the stage, holding her first concerts using 3-D technology.
Like any pop star, corporate endorsements came shortly after, and her fans kept growing. (Read more about her rise to fame here.)
Her first dedicated store came earlier this year, and she launched her own official car in Japan this month, too.
Is she about to take over America?
Well, Americans seem less obsessed with cyberpop than the Japanese do (though it certainly worked for Tupac at Coachella in 2012), but she’s definitely making inroads in pop culture in the States. Pharrell released a remix featuring Miku in May.
She’s on a mini tour of America right now, doing four shows in Los Angeles last week and two in New York at Hammerstein Ballroom this weekend. That might be tiring for a real pop star, but so long as Miku’s batteries don’t run out, she won’t stop.