At a time when social media rewards musicians who share their lives with the public, Japanese artist Ado is proof that mystery can also be a valuable commodity.
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The 22-year-old singer spent the spring and summer performing at arenas in 33 cities across Asia, Europe and the Americas, standing inside a see-through, cube-shaped cage that revealed only her silhouette. Without a video screen to show her face — even cameras and binoculars are strictly forbidden at her concerts — the audience focuses only on her electrifying voice and the orgy of light and graphics displayed behind her.
“I suppose one of the reasons why the people that come to my shows or listen to my music is so diverse because my style doesn’t specifically speak to a particular gender,” the 22-year-old singer tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast through an interpreter. “Perhaps it has to do with me not revealing my identity, but also my voice as well. It’s not typically feminine, and sometimes it can be even more powerful than a masculine voice.”
Although the audience could see only her silhouette, Ado was aware of her surroundings. “I see a lot,” she explains. “There’s some people out there who are jumping, and then there are others that are like laser fixed on my performance. There are little kids and they’re also older people as well. There’s a wide diversity in terms of my fans, from teenagers to older people [who] seem to love me or love my music, which I appreciate.”
Ado has quickly ascended to a leading role in Japan’s push to export its music to the U.S. and other markets. Signed to Universal Music Group in 2020, Ado topped the Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart the following year with the song “Usseewa.”
The global popularity of Japanese anime has helped Ado gain a following outside of her home country. In 2022, she was the singing voice actress for the animated film One Piece Film: Red and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 chart with “New Genesis” from the movie. Last year, she found a new audience as a guest on a remix of Imagine Dragons’ “Take Me to the Beach.” This year, Ado become Spotify’s most-streamed Japanese artist outside of Japan.
On her recently concluded Hibana World Tour, Ado became the first Japanese artist to sell out such arenas as Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, SAP Center in San Jose, Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, Uber Arena in Berlin, Accor Arena in Paris and Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. Through it all, audiences know very little about her other than her music.
As Ado is quick to point out, she’s not unique in hiding her identity. Anonymity is standard in Japan’s vocaloid music scene that centers around music made by a singing synthesizer software that creates vocals in the same way a person can use a digital audio workstation to create songs by dragging and dropping notes onto a screen. She grew up watching vocaloid videos on Niconico, a Japanese video sharing platform, and eventually become an utaite, a person who covers vocaloid songs. Utaite singers traditionally keep their identities a secret and use an avatar to represent their public persona.
“I thought, ‘Okay, this might be something that I can do.’ Because up until then, if I thought that if I were to sing or become a singer, it involved going on TV, showing who I was, you know, having a spotlight on myself. But being able to do this anonymously seemed to bring up endless possibilities.”
Listen to the entire interview with Ado in the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, Podbean or Everand.
