“Until I Make U Smile”

It can be difficult to wrap your head around the concept of Japan’s virtual pop star Hatsune Miku, an eternal 16-year-old with teal, floor-length pigtails, a very real and rabid audience, and human overlords (Crypton Future Media). Yet she answers only to her fans, who can create songs for her using Yamaha’s Vocaloid software and animate videos in the Miku Miku Dance freeware. She is both proprietary and open-source—“a voice singing songs written by the masses, for the masses,” as Laurel Halo and Mari Matsutoya write in an essay accompanying “Still Be Here,” a “hybrid performance piece” for Miku. The collaborative project by Halo, Matsutoya, the digital artists Martin Sulzer and LaTurbo Avedon, and the choreographer Darren Johnson is a critique and celebration of the Miku phenomenon.

“Until I Make You Smile,” one of the songs created by the group, is a strange, tender, and captivating entry to Miku’s repertoire. Halo wrote and produced the music; the lyrics, which Matsutoya programmed, are drawn from a variety of sources that include fragments of existing Miku songs, a fan’s love letter to her, and corporate slogans. For Halo's fans, it's fascinating to hear her working with sounds and tropes so different from previous work. Over ruminative piano reminiscent of Ryuichi Sakamoto or DJ Sprinkles, Miku sings wistfully of her virtual existence, often with a sly sense of humor (“Made a choice to become a superstar/But such a high-pitched tone hurts”). The underlying sense of pathos runs even deeper. Toward the end, as she sings, “The drop that fell from my hand/Was probably pre-empting the end,” she sounds as yearning as a 21st-century Pinocchio. As Miku fades out, piano and violins fall away, leaving only an odd, shuddering rhythm and a quiet explosion of bell tones and digital chirps. In the end, Hatsune Miku remains as cryptic as her coding.