From a middle school bedroom artist to making music for some of the biggest animes, to wold out tours, twenty-one-year-old J-pop artist, Ado, has made a globally known name for herself.
Ado’s story starts in 2017, as a fourteen-year-old middle schooler, when she started making music as an utaite, an artist who covers Vocaloid music, and got started by posting her covers online. Though new people discovering her still get her confused with those of Hatsune Miku or other vocaloids, she’s moved past just labeling herself as an utaite. She’s been making music with the help of popular producers in the vocaloid community and has now even released some original songs and albums.
It wasn’t until the day before her eighteenth birthday that her career would skyrocket with the release of her first original single, “Usseewa,” back in 2020. The song blew up on multiple social media platforms and hit huge streaming numbers on Spotify. To many, this was their first introduction to Ado, and people were hooked!
With more singles and covers being released throughout the years, it wasn’t until 2022 that Ado officially released her first album Kyougen, which featured some of her most popular hits like “Gira Gira,” “Odo” and “Usseewa.” The album also featured some famous Vocaloid producers such as TeddyLoid, syudou, Mikito P and more.
Ado is described to have a very unique voice, often described as loud, powerful and raspy, which benefits the often angry, rage-filled, feeling of her songs. The fans love this about her music! Like many other popular musicians nowadays, Ado is known as a “faceless singer.” Her face and much of her personal life are very hidden, but she often uses an anime-style character to represent herself online and interacts with fans in fun ways like streaming or just posting about her travels on her Instagram. You can find some funny videos of her online reacting to her past performances where she cringes and laughs at herself, doing Q&A’s or just playing games like Minecraft. Being the age she is and with her talent, she’s often described as speaking a lot about her generation and being a voice for Gen-Z.
A few months later, following the release of Kyougen, one of Ado’s biggest projects was revealed. This would give her career one of the biggest boosts yet. She was set to play the singing voice for a new character, Uta, an idol singer, in the hit anime franchise One Piece. This brand new feature film, One Piece: Film Red, would be released worldwide in theatres.
The promo for the movie itself was huge (It being One Piece of course), but when the singles for the soundtrack got released, they went viral on TikTok and other social media platforms. The first three singles released for movie promotion were “New Genesis,” “I’m Invincible” and “Backlight,” with “New Genesis” being the main song used for the movie and character. With fans freaking out about Ado’s huge new role, it quickly spread to other people unknown to both Ado and One Piece, saying that they’ll have to get into the over one-thousand-episode series to watch the movie and hear the music. Ado’s music for the movie soundtrack rapidly went to the top of the charts and even hit number one on the Billboard Japan Hot Albums Chart. This huge boost is what also got Ado officially signed to Geffen Records and Decca Records, but this was just the start of a new chapter for the singer.
Following this, Ado kept blowing up! Making hits with the popular K-pop group, Le Sserafim, and a song of hers “Kura Kura,” was even used as the opening theme for the second season of the hit anime series Spy x Family. But she wasn’t done with all these amazing new projects, because on Ado’s twenty-first birthday, she announced her first world tour, Wish.
Ado had done tours before, but only in Japan. The Wish tour covered cities in Asia, Europe and America. The tour sold out almost immediately and started in Bangkok in February 2024, and ended in Austin, Texas, on April 2024.
Videos from her tour often went viral online with fans commenting on her amazing live vocals, hearing her cover of other hit songs, (specifically “Unravel” from Tokyo Ghoul and “Aishete Aishete Aishete” by Kikuo and Hatsune Miku). Her Film Red songs, and even seeing how she puts on a performance as a faceless artist, just by using her silhouette, energy and stage presence! Overall, the feedback from her tour was amazing and fans are often wondering if she ever plans to do a part two of this tour.
A few weeks after ending her tour, on April 20th, Ado announced that her second studio album, Zanmu would be released on July 10, 2024, along with a live recording of a show from her Wish tour!
Zanmu included many of her past hits like “I’m a Controversy,” “Kura Kura,” “Show,” and more hits dating from 2022 to July 2024 at the latest. This being the case, many fans loved that they had these songs compiled into one to buy and were just happy about the album release overall, but there was one complaint many had, and it was about the album being promoted as “new” when most tracks had been out for years. The often explanation for this was that most of Ado’s recent music had been used for shows or collaborations, and this album was a way for fans to have a physical CD and have the tracks all together in one place instead of them all being labeled as separate singles on streaming services.
As to what Ado is up to today? It hasn’t quite slowed down for her. Ado is currently on another Japan tour, which kicked off on July 14th and concludes on October 13th. With the huge community and fan base the musician has made for herself, everyone is eager to hear what new single, project, collab or possible new world tour she might have planned in the future. It looks like Ado’s career doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon!
I am a photographer, musician, and cosplayer, based in Austin! I spend a lot of time traveling around for events, and am constantly creating things, listening to music, playing bass guitar, or finding new hobbies to indulge in. I love being surrounded by music, and you can almost always catch me listening to some emo or pop-punk music.
