Call it the rapture, Armageddon, the End of Days, whatever. Perhaps Gorillaz are to blame for this — according to npr, though, you could go all the way back to Josie and the Pussycats for starting it, or even The Archies for having a hit single in “Sugar, Sugar.” But now there’s a legion of animated bands that have been popping up like crazy lately, from Deathklok on Cartoon Network’s Metalocalypse, to UK/Scandinavian outfit Studio Killers and their hit Ode to the Bouncer, the video for which details a CGI plus-sized girl’s quest to get into a hot nightclub overrun by skinny chicks.
Regardless of what you think of the song, the video in itself is a rarity: zoftig babe seduces security, makes her way inside, and presumably engages in copious amounts of x and expensive champagne til she bleeds that strange neon paint she keeps slathering herself in. I don’t know why, but it’s like a lot of youtubers keep pointing out. At first, the song is cringingly annoying, but the 3rd time it’s in your head like a chunk of infected code.
There’s also Hatsune Miku, the saucer-eyed virtual anime pop star, who not only ‘sings’ but sells Toyotas and albums but even performs live. The combined image of 12 different projectors, 20-foot tall Miku is rendered as a 3d hologram on stage for raging fans (lots of boys included) who shake those glow-in-the-dark raver sticks a bit too fanatically, if you know what I mean. Miku’s first American shows, scheduled for the 2011 Anime Expo, have already sold out.
I guess one might ask…are we witnessing the demise of our beloved modern pop star? Maybe MJ’s passing could be looked at as the death of an industry, or at least, the death-knoll. Or in a world of auto-tuning and elaborate audio processing where everything can be Pro-Tooled to perfection, maybe we were already headed there to begin with. Japanese cartoons like Robotech sort of foretold this sort of music industry change years ago, with the character of Lynn Minmei and holographic musicians.
Perhaps we’ll get some sort of backlash: the music industry did take a bit of a hit from all the illegal pirating in the 2000s, and this could be a huge economic boost for them — if they do it sparsely, and with some catchy writing by real ‘flesh-slugs’, as Megatron called humans on Transformers. In exchange: no flaky celebrity behavior, no drug or alcohol problems, and most of all, no salaries to pay. Either way, it’s a fascinating development, and gives us a closer look at the strange psyche of one of our chief technological competitors (as well as our own).
Jeff Nau – who has written 1264 posts on The Jace Hall Show.
Jeff Nau is a main contributor to the Jace Hall Show covering pop culture and music trends in the nerd community. He has contributed to San Diego City Beat, 944, and Ill Literature, amongst others, and spends his spare time working as an artist and photographer.

Logan Huffman wants to know who is posting comments about him online and asks Jace for help. Meanwhile Joe Flanigan is caught again flirting in the V costume. Jace heads to the set of Law and Order: SVU to catch up with Ice – T and Coco and the Starcraft II team gets “rushed” by World of Warcraft Lead Designer, Jeff Kaplan.
Jace has decided to take advantage of his co-hosting duties at the Sony Online Entertainment Fan Faire celebration, by showing his new music video to the thousands of EverQuest players in attendance, much to the dismay of the crowd. That didn’t stop one enthusiastic guest from doing something radical.