Alice
When I was learning Japanese, I used to listen to Japanese songs a lot, mainly J-Pop.
To be honest, I didn’t really like Japanese songs that much; although I really liked the fact that the lyrics were often very narrative in style, I didn’t care for either the arrangements or the singing style.
Vocaloid is an area I follow closely, largely because Hatsune Miku is so popular; it’s a voice bank developed by Yamaha. As it was released around 2008, everything from that era had a distinct early-electronic, retro feel to it—take Windows XP, for example: it was very retro, with a UI that was old-fashioned and rather ugly, yet it always sparked a sense of wonder about the future.
Technology wasn’t particularly advanced back then, so Miku’s voice bank is vastly different from what we have today.
What I find most captivating about early Vocaloid tracks is that the voice banks are imbued with an ‘electronic’ quality and an unnatural feel, resulting from the technology’s immaturity at the time. The technology was nowhere near as sophisticated as it is today, so Miku’s voice always carries a sense of mechanicalness, fragility and loneliness. Unlike the new voice banks of today, it retains that inhuman, electronic texture. Consequently, it’s as though a robotic girl who ought to belong to the future is singing in a bygone era, her songs played through equipment steeped in a retro atmosphere.
Since Miku isn’t a real person to begin with—she’s a piece of software—I think that when producers use her as a vocalist nowadays, they should ask themselves why early Vocaloid tracks sounded so ethereal, lonely and ghostly, like a robotic girl with a touch of humanity. Rather than using new technology to make Miku sing just like a real vocalist—producing a perfect voice that has lost her distinctive character. Since you’ve chosen to use Hatsune Miku as your vocalist rather than a real person, I hope you absolutely do not use her simply for the trivial and childish reason that ‘she’s Hatsune Miku’. After all, she possesses characteristics that human vocalists simply cannot match. If your goal is a human-like voice, why not just find a real vocalist…
Alice is my absolute favourite Vocaloid track; it has such a unique texture—that retro yet sci-fi, electronic vibe that seems to transport you straight back a dozen or so years. The melody is simple yet captivating; the voice is cold and distant, making it immediately clear that it’s a robot singing, yet it retains a hint of humanity. The atmosphere carries a touch of ruin, dreamlike quality and nostalgia, as if in a deserted future, a robot with just a trace of humanity were singing old songs from an era when humans still existed.
Then there’s メルト —that’s my second favourite. These are the only two Vocaloid tracks I like.
Actually, when it comes to early Vocaloid tracks that have gone on to become classics, I reckon most of them should possess these qualities (though, of course, songs like 甩蔥歌 don’t count—it’s even more popular than Alice, but I’d say that’s nothing more than a meme).