Kikuo (Japanese: きくお, born September 21, 1988) is a Japanese songwriter and Vocaloid producer. As an independent artist, he produces the lyrics and music for each of his songs under his own record label, "Kikuo Sound Works," often with vocals provided by popular Crypton Future Media voicebank, Hatsune Miku. His unique style of music production is characterized by detailed, high-tempo sound design, with several overlaying instruments and effects to create colorful and upbeat harmonies, often juxtaposed by unsettling lyrics.
Additionally, Kikuo is best known for his song, "Love Me, Love Me, Love Me" (愛して愛して愛して, Aishite Aishite Aishite) which surpassed 100 million streams on Spotify in January 2023 and 100 million views on YouTube in October 2024, the first Hatsune Miku song to achieve this feat.[2][3]
Life and career
Kikuo credits experiences in elementary school for inspiring him to be a creator, recalling how bullies would stop harassing him to take an interest in his creative works, such as "gamebooks," with some even calling him talented and lucky to have such creativity.[4] In a 2023 interview with Japanese web magazine Freezine, Kikuo specifically discussed how bullying shaped his worldview and motivation to create:[5]
Going back a long way, when I was in elementary school I was being bullied, but when I showed them a gamebook that I made by myself, they were like, "You're amazing," and the bullying stopped temporarily when I was playing with the gamebook, but as soon as I took the gamebook away, the bullying started again. From that situation, I realized, "Oh, I can't survive in this society without creativity," and in middle school I thought I had to find something I was good at, anything creative, so I tried a lot of different things, but I couldn't do the things I wasn't good at...There were a lot of things I didn't have, and I got bored very easily, so I got bored of everything, and in the end, the only thing I didn't get bored of was DTM.
Though Kikuo initially used his creativity to evade school bullies, he concluded that creativity would be necessary to survive in society, too. His passion for Desktop Music (DTM) led him to start creating music in 2003, uploading songs to 2channel while still in middle school.[6] Noticing little interest in his early works, bright and flashy pop songs with dance tempos, he investigated the Vocaloid genre. Kikuo told Freezine that songs with more grotesque themes experienced greater success, leading him to make darker pieces himself.[7]
Kikuo published his first Vocaloid song in 2010,[6] followed by his 2011 debut studio album, Kikuo Miku. In 2016, he performed alongside other acts at Dwango's annual Nico Nico Cho Party (Japanese: ニコニコ超パーティー, lit.'Smiley Super Party') in Saitama Super Arena.[8] Kikuo's work gained popularity, even being featured in the Educational Arts Company high school textbook, "High School Music 1" (Japanese: 高校生の音楽1), as part of a section covering the Vocaloid genre. His song "Six Greetings" was referenced in the textbook along with a lead sheet featuring lyrics and notes from the song.[9] Kikuo was also featured in a documentary by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) about Hatsune Miku.[6] As of 2024, Kikuo has created over 1,000 songs,[10] more than a dozen albums, and worked with various shows, film projects, games, and other media (see Affiliated works below). His three most streamed songs include:[11]
"Love Me, Love Me, Love Me" (愛して愛して愛して, Aishite Aishite Aishite)
"You are a Useless Child" (君はできない子, Kimi wa Dekinai Ko)
"Dance of the Corpses" (しかばねの踊り, Shikabane no Odori)
The three songs belong to Kikuo's 2013 album Kikuo Miku 3 (Japanese: きくおミク3), and have amassed over 260 million streams collectively on Spotify, as of 2024.[11] "Love Me, Love Me, Love Me" in particular surpassed 100 million streams on Spotify in January 2023, making it the first Vocaloid song to achieve this feat, and most streamed song in the Vocaloid genre as a whole.[2][3]
Artistry
Music production
Kikuo's production process is well documented, having been recorded and highlighted in the 2012 "Miku Creator's Project" on Google+,[12] and also on the online education website, Coloso.[13] He uses a wide range of known and unknown instruments, effects, plugins, vocal synthesizers, and is known for using unorthodox samples such as crushing fruit, wrenches and machinery, squeaks of toys, and even sounds of childhood classrooms to enhance the settings of his songs.[14] Preferring not to use MIDI keyboards to arrange notes, Kikuo points and clicks with a touchpad and mouse.[15] When asked in an interview with Rittor's music magazine, Plug+, about how he chooses sounds to set his music apart he replied, "The philosophy I always follow when choosing sounds is that 'beauty is consistency'...For example, I believe that an orderly arrangement of bricks is more beautiful than a jumble of stones. In music, we feel that something is beautiful when the notes are arranged according to certain rules."[16]
Japanese and Chinese software-voicebanks (collectively known as Vocaloids) provide the main vocals and ad-libs in most Kikuo songs. Recurring Vocaloids used by Kikuo include the popular virtual idol, Hatsune Miku from Crypton Future Media, and Qi Xuan (Mandarin: 绮萱) from Beijing TimeDomain Technology's ACE Virtual Singer (Mandarin: ACE虚拟歌姬). He has also made demo songs for various Vocaloids running on the Vocaloid 3 engine, including Tone Rion (Japanese: 兎眠りおん),[17]IA (Japanese: イア),[18] and Anri Rune (Japanese: 杏梨ルネ)[19] (see Demo songs below). In addition to Vocaloids, Kikuo has also worked with traditional human voices as in the case of his lower-tempo, collaborative album Kikuo feat. si_ku, where his friend and repeat album cover artist, "si_ku", provided vocals.
Kikuo uses Studio One as his preferred DAW with VST plugins for instruments (VSTi) and effects (VSTfx). For VSTi, he is known to use Omnisphere, Kontakt, Massive, and Addictive Drums. For VSTfx, he is known to use Fabfilter, Glitch Machines, Waves Signature Series, Ozone, and Komplete. Additionally, Kikuo acquires samples from Splice and Loopcloud, utilizing the software "Reference4" for acoustic corrections. His hardware preferences include the A7X Active Studio Monitor speaker from ADAM Audio in conjunction with Focal's Clear MG Pro headphones.[6] When asked by Plug+ about an effect he considers best for Vocaloid, Kikuo replied, "It's a pitch shifter. I think there's no point in using detailed and complicated effects because it won't be conveyed anyway. That's why I'm focusing on how to use old-fashioned retro plug-ins dynamically."[20]
Lyrical themes
Kikuo's music typically has lyrics exploring heavier topics.[21] A recurring motif in Kikuo's most popular songs is that of the problem child, accompanied by lyrics which explore themes of suffering, escapism, and trauma. Kikuo often uses bright melodies, audio samples of toys, and the youthful voices of Vocaloids to juxtapose the dark subject matter of his songs.
Works and side projects unrelated to Kikuo's mainstream discography are found below:
"Asian Melancholic" is a Kikuo side project debuted in 2015.[22] Compared to other projects, Asian Melancholic's work is eponymously more pensive and low-tempo, often instrumental with minor exceptions. His EPAt First was released August 17, 2015 and includes 5 songs with a runtime of 00:17:54.
"I Want an Older Sister" (Japanese: 僕はお姉さんがほしい) is a manga created by Kikuo in 2013, available on the Japanese art site Pixiv.[23][24]
"Kikuostories Aishite Aishite Aishite" (Japanese: Kikuostories 愛して愛して愛して) is a novel written by Kikuo and Ryoji Takamatsu (Japanese: 髙松 良次 文) in 2023, novelizing his two most popular songs, "Love Me, Love Me, Love Me" (愛して愛して愛して, Aishite Aishite Aishite) and "You are a Useless Child" (君はできない子, Kimi wa Dekinai Ko) into a love story and familial tragedy, respectively.[25]
Affiliated works
In addition to the above works, Kikuo has also supported various media projects including games, TV shows, movies, promotional content for Yamaha's Vocaloids (see Demo songs above), and musical productions by other artists. His roles across these projects include lyricist, composer (writing and arranging), audio master, mixer, etc. Projects where Kikuo is not the focus, and involvement is limited, are listed below:
Ikitama - Musical group headed by "si_ku" (Kikuo's friend, collaborator, and main artist). Kikuo helped compose and master.[26][27]
Kikuo has made several appearances in Japan over the years. His first world tour, "Kikuoland-Go-Round," will occur between 2024 and 2025.[6][36][37] In an interview with Plug+, Kikuo explained his motivation for touring overseas, "I knew I had fans all over the world, so I thought 'I can do it' [laughs]. I don't think a Vocaloid producer has ever performed overseas, so I wanted to do something unknown that no one has ever done before."[38]
^Mizuki 2024, p. 2. Original Quote: Looking back, I've been bullied ever since kindergarten, but the only time I wasn't bullied was when I was in elementary school and I made gamebooks and let my friends play them... In fact, there were two times when bullies would say to me, "You're lucky. You have that kind of creative talent." (振り返ると、幼稚園のときからずっといじめられてきて、でも小学校のころゲームブックを作って友だちにやらせている間だけはいじめられなかったんですよ。 。 。 実際、2回くらいいじめっ子に“お前は良いよな。そういう創作の才能があって”みたいな感じに言われたことがありました。)
^Shimizu 2023, p. 1. Original quote: すごい前までさかのぼると、小学生のころいじめられてたけど、一人遊びで作ってたゲームブックみたいなのを見せたら、「お前すげぇ」みたいな風になって、ゲームブックやらせてるときだけ一時的にいじめが止んで、ゲームブック引っ込めたら途端にいじめられるみたいな。そういう状況から、「あ、創作じゃないと生きていけないんだ、俺この社会で」ってなって、中学のころに創作ならとりあえずなんでもいいから、自分の得意なもの探さなきゃと思って、いろんなことチャレンジしたんですけど苦手なこともでき。。。ないこともすごく多いし、めっちゃ飽きっぽかったんで、あらゆることに飽きた結果、最後に一つだけ飽きなかったのがDTMだったみたいなことだったんですよ。
^Shimizu 2023, p. 1 Original Quote:So I thought I'd try making a darker one, and that became an instant hit, and that's how I got to where I am today. (じゃあ暗いのも作ってみようかなって思ったらそれが途端にヒットして、で現在に至るんですけど。)
^Shimizu 2023, p. 1 Original Quote: For example, if it's a song about things, I won't hesitate to include sounds of things breaking, if it's a song about a child dying, I'll include a lot of sounds of toys, and if it's a grotesque song, I'll just use the sound of fruit being crushed in a horror movie. (例えば、物に関する曲だったら躊躇なく物が壊れる音とか入れるし、子どもが死ぬような曲だったらおもちゃの音とかガンガン入れるし、グロテスクな曲だったらホラー映画の果物握りつぶした音とかもそのまま使っちゃうし、っていう簡単な発想だったりしますね。)
^Mizuki 2024, p. 2 Original Quote: I can't play the piano at all, and I can't even play Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Si-Do, so I finally threw away my MIDI keyboard recently. I'm making music using only the touch pad of my laptop. (ピアノは全く弾けないし、ドレミファソラシドも弾けないので最近はとうとうMIDIキーボードを捨てたんですよ。ノートPCのタッチ・パッドだけで作っています。)
^Mizuki 2024, p. 2 Original Japanese: その中で僕が音選びのときに常に哲学としてることは、“美とは整合性である”ということなんですけど。。。例えば、ゴチャゴチャと石が転がっているよりは、レンガが整然と積まれている方が美しいっていう考えです。音楽だと、一定のルールで音が配列されていると美しいと感じる。
^DAOKO×ドラガリアロスト（初回限定盤） [DAOKO x Dragalia Lost (first limited edition)]. store.toysfactory.co.jp. Archived from the original on December 7, 2022. Retrieved August 10, 2024.
^ abRelease Dates may not reflect dates seen on streaming services due to timezone differences, re-releases, or work being moved to services at dates later than initial release.
^A limited edition special production CD packed with songs from the seven years before Kikuo started using Vocaloid (Kikuo Miku0 for short! Includes commentary) (きくおがボカロを始める前 7年間の楽曲を限界まで詰め込んだ数量限定の 特別生産CD
(略してきくおミク0! 解説入り, Kikuo ga bokaro o hajimeru mae 7-nenkan no gakkyoku o genkai made tsumekonda sūryō gentei no tokubetsu seisan CD (ryaku shite Kikuo Miku0! Kaisetsu-iri)
^Shimizu's full name is Rika Shimizu (清水 里華). His name is formatted differently in the citation for referencing purposes. Non - English language templates (in this case 'Nihongo') can not operate in certain footnote templates above ('sfn' and 'harv'). Thus, only the Romanization of his name in the name parameters of the 'cite-web' template.
