Music snobs love to complain that artists they don't like are "fake" - that they look or sound too manufactured. But what if your favorite musician or band is fake by definition? As digital and holographic technologies have gotten more popular, there's been a dramatic rise in bands and performers who don't exist in real life at all. What is a virtual band? Cartoon rock stars like the Archies and Jem and the Holograms have been entrancing tykes and tweens for decades, releasing chart-topping albums and filling up our TV screens with radical music videos. These days, virtual bands, and virtual pop idols, have become a huge craze in Japan, and are slowly but surely making their way to America. Who's your favorite virtual musician? Animated pop idol Hatsune Miku started off as a spokesperson for Japan's Vocaloid software and gradually transformed into a musical icon in her own right. Today, Miku packs huge stadiums full of screaming fans, who pay big bucks for the privilege of watching their #1 diva perform "live" in the form of a mirror-projected hologram. Soon we may see the day when hologram-projected concerts are the norm. What pop star wants to take the time and effort to actually get up on stage and do a show when the whole thing can be pre-recorded and staged without them? For now, in honor of the currently rising trend of virtual pop idols, here's a retrospective of the best, most popular virtual musicians ever. Vote up your favorite fictitious bands below to decide just which virtual musician is the best of all time!
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Bursting onto the scene with their hit "Clint Eastwood," virtual experimental rap group Gorillaz have maintained a position of cultural prominence ever since. The group was created in 1998 by two Brits named Damon Albarn and Damon Hewlett.
If Dr. Teeth wasn't secretly one of your favorite Muppets, then you might just be lying to yourself. Simultaneously a hilarious parody of hippie culture and a genuinely rockin' psych folk oddity, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem were one of the greatest parts of the original Muppet Show, and are still a highlight of each new Muppets film.
Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls have been at it for decades, playing sold-out live shows, starring in an acclaimed documentary, and releasing three studio albums. Except that they are, in fact, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, master improvisers parodying intellectually bereft '70s and '80s metal. They've kept the joke running long, long after the "rockumentary" This Is Spinal Tap, effectively doing rock and roll better than most of the bands they were making fun of in the first place.
As seen on the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse, Dethklok was created by humorist and animation mastermind Brendon Small. Basically, Dethklok is the most brutal heavy metal band on earth, and the intensity of their music often causes injury, insanity, and spontaneous natural disasters. They also created an entire metal album that is only for fish. Recently, a live-action version of Dethklok was created out of actual, living humans so that the band could perform live.
Disney fans who grew up in the ‘90s have nothing but nostalgic affection for Powerline, the fictional popstar who helps inspire the cross-country road trip in A Goofy Movie. A neon-tinged mashup of Michael Jackson, Prince, and new-jack swing acts of the early ’90s, it's understandable how Powerline is popular enough to have Max Goof and all of his friends obsessed, especially when you hear his absolute earworm of a single "Eye To Eye".
Josie and the Pussycats were also an Archie comics spin-off. Presumably, after Archie and his friends stole their idea and ended up with a #1 pop hit, Josie and the Pussycats decided to also make the move from comic books to chart-topping musical riffs. They never quite matched Archie's clout in the bubblegum pop universe, but they did become cultural icons of a sort. There was even a live action movie adaptation in 2001.
The oldest and most distinguished fictitious band, the Chipmunks were created during the 1960s when some dude figured out he could speed up his voice and do covers of popular songs that sounded like they were being sung by hyperactive rodents. Since their inception, the Chipmunks have experienced many popular iterations. They spawned a series of animated shorts during the 1960s and a Saturday morning cartoon series during the 1980s, eventually getting their own feature film,The Chipmunk Adventure, in 1987. Often the Chipmunks appear alongside their girl friends (but not girlfriends) and musical competitors, the Chipettes. Most recently, the Chipmunks and Chipettes have appeared in a series of live action Hollywood films.
Adapted from the overweeningly wholesome Archie comic series, which still to this day is available for sale in most supermarket checkout lines, the Archies were surprisingly successful. Their bubblegum pop song appropriately titled "Sugar, Sugar" became a #1 Billboard hit in 1969, and is still one of the most memorable examples of the genre.
A formative fashionista of the '80s tween scene, Jem continues to move and inspire us with both her music and her stylistic flair. Perhaps the most memorable (and definitely the girliest) example of the rockstar alter-ego trope more recently popularized by Hannah Montana, Jem and the Holograms also gave birth to slightly punkier honorable mention, the Misfits.
Hatsune Miku began as an ultra-kawaii illustrated mascot for Vocaloid, a Japanese electronics brand. Vocaloid's software essentially turns your lyrics into auto-tuned singing, which is digitally generated using a fake voice. Miku became so popular that she now commands a huge fan following. She's also a spokesperson for Domino's pizza in Japan.
The Banana Splits were giant, puppetlike monsters who starred in their own television variety show for children. Though they were weird and terrifying, they were also beloved. Produced by Hanna-Barbera, the show delighted easy-to-please children every Saturday morning from 1968 to '70. The Splits were mainly known for their wacky hijinks, but they did also play in a band together, and would sometimes perform songs.
Crescendolls are the virtual band from Daft Punk's infamous cartoon cult classic Interstella 555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem. As such, they sound pretty much a lot like Daft Punk. Daft Punk's second album, Discovery, includes a track named "Crescendolls" in homage to the fictitious band.
We completely forgot about the song "Killer Tofu," but alas, while researching this list, we stumbled upon it once again, and now it will be stuck in our heads forever. If you ever watched the Nickelodeon cartoon Doug as a child, you no doubt feel similarly about "Killer Tofu," as well as the Beets' other hit single, "Shout Your Lungs Out." An obvious riff on The Beatles, the Beets were Doug Funnie's favorite band, and when they weren't making cameo appearances, their two infuriatingly catchy songs were being played, danced to, and sung along with on a constant loop by every student at Doug's entire middle school. Remember, kids - don't eat too much fried food!
A spinoff of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which was a spinoff of The Archie Show, Groovie Goolies followed a posse of goofy monsters inspired by the old Universal Studios clan. They frequently rocked out with musical instruments on their popular cartoon show. They also hosted other made-up bands that often parodied other pop acts of the day, including the Rolling Headstones, the Mummies and the Puppies, and the Spirits of '76.
One of the most off-the-rails anime series in existence, Detroit Metal City is inspired by American heavy metal culture, particularly KISS. It's a little bit like Metalocalypse, only way more Japanese. The show's titular band, whose name is a tribute to KISS' megahit "Detroit Rock City," has successfully released a number of albums in Japan.
Fans were first introduced to Daisy Jones & The Six in the Taylor Jenkins Reid novel of the same name published in 2019. The ‘70s band is loosely inspired by Fleetwood Mac, and their backstory is as full of heartbreak, substance abuse, and mayhem as you might expect. The novel, which charts the group’s meteoric rise and equally sudden fall, was a sensation, and Amazon Prime adapted it into a limited series airing in March 2023. With the series came a soundtrack from the “real” Daisy Jones & The Six, written by artists including Phoebe Bridgers, Marcus Mumford, and Jackson Browne, and sung by the actors themselves.
Beginning his life as viral sensation "The Annoying Thing," Crazy Frog soon became an electropop rags-to-riches tale when numerous remixes of his unintelligible jabbering turned him into a celebrity-status meme character. After being re-dubbed "Crazy Frog," he went on to star in several dubsteppy, electro-type videos of various sorts.
Your Favorite Martian, now sadly discontinued, was the experimental rap group of Youtuber Ray William Johnson. Each member had an animated alter-ego, and their songs were often heavily inspired by geek culture.
The actual identities of the singers and musicians who helped craft this European electropop band remain shrouded in mystery. The Studio Killers first achieved international attention in 2011 with the release of their premiere single, "Ode to the Bouncer," the success of which was helped by a truly weird and hilarious animated music video featuring their lead singer, Cherry.
After achieving low-level meme status with his "The Gummy Bear Song," Gummibär has mercilessly gone on to record and release a number of similar electronic nightmares. All of them include music videos, which usually feature Gummibär himself, in all his neon green glory, bouncing gleefully around various locales and causing havoc.
Miss Monochrome premiered in 2013. Though she still stages live hologram performances, she has ascended to greater individual fame as the star of a popular anime series. The show elaborates on Miss Monochrome's personal history as an android and great admirer of a human pop idol named Kikuko, whom Miss Monochrome wishes to emulate by becoming a pop idol herself.
A stop-motion group with a bizarre, indefinable feel, Milgrom gives off a weird DIY punk vibe, and their lead performers are reminiscent of something straight out of a Tim Burton movie.
Feltworth is a Canadian four-piece rock group, the members of which all happen to be puppets. They are actually an odd side project of the band Sloan.
Self-produced band Skeleton Staff consists of four members. The poppy jams created by this eclectic inter-species mix are available to download at Bandcamp.
One eskimO actually consists of four animated members - a giraffe, a monkey, a penguin, and an Eskimo. In their music videos, the quartet struggles to reunite their lead singer with his tragically estranged girlfriend. A couple of their singles have charted, and they've been featured on several popular talk shows, including The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
Genki Rockets is unique in the world of virtual musical artists in that the project's front woman is portrayed by a living, breathing, non-animated human. Rachel Rhodes, who plays "Lumi" in music videos, isn't the same person who actually performs her music, though. Lumi's personal history is also fabricated - in fact, it's hard to call it a "history" at all since she comes from the year 2037. Genki Rockets is actually the brainchild of a digital media artist (Tetsuya Mizoguchi) and a music producer (Kenji Tamai) who teamed up to create the character and her ouvre.
One of the most shameless ripoffs in the history of gimmicky pop music, the Nutty Squirrels were conceptually identical to the Chipmunks. Like their ground-dwelling forefathers, the Squirrels released a number of albums that consisted of sped-up covers of popular songs. They even released their own Christmas album.
Mistula is a virtual band from the Philippines that consists of ball-jointed dolls who are into brooding heavy metal. Sometimes the dolls hold still, other times they are animated using stop-motion techniques. Their music videos are bizarre and creepy, and are usually filled with severed doll limbs .
Freen in Green is a virtual electropop group. Their "band" consists of four members, all of whom are goofy little animated cartoon characters. They're independent, and handle all their own bookings and releases.
Created in the early 2000s by Cartoon Network UK, VBirds were a virtual girl group modeled partially after the Spice Girls. One of their singles, "Virtuality," released in 2003, found some success in the United Kingdom.
