"Who even cares about vocal synthesizers? That's nerdy anime stuff, and they don't even sound good!"

People can be incredibly quick to judge and make uneducated assumptions about the vocal synth community and the technology surrounding it. People will form the wrong idea about Hatsune Miku, mistaking her for a Virtual YouTuber or an AI-generated singer. What I've learned in my seven years of surrounding myself in this little nook of the internet is that outsiders fail to see the human passion and creativity behind every work posted in this wonderful community. They fail to see the real impact that the rise of vocal synthesizers has done, far beyond the scope of the music or the voices or the characters.
Below are some faces, songs, and albums that have left a definitive impact on the vocal synthesizer community and its culture, and some who have even extended beyond the sphere and created something even bigger beyond it.

HACHI was a fairly-popular Vocal Synth Producer from 2009-2012, known best for his chaotic and heavily filtered compositions. As of writing this, his most popular VOCALOID song, MATRYOSHKA, has over 79 million views on YouTube and is regarded as one of GUMI's most iconic duets. Before his start in VOCALOID, he had attempted to start a band in middle school, with very little success. It was through that, where he discovered his creative spark. With the VOCALOID editor at his disposal, he spent hours a day dedicating himself to creating songs and music videos, to the point of dropping out of high school. As a result of growing up socially-inept (due to undiagnosed autism), the internet served as a sanctuary where HACHI felt less foreign and around more likeminded individuals.
Nowadays, HACHI is better-known by his real name, Kenshi Yonezu. Yonezu is currently one of Japan's top solo musicians, with all of his music never failing to skyrocket in views and listens. He holds the title for having Japan's most-viewed music video for his 2018 hit, "Lemon", sitting at over 900 million views. In the recent pop culture, Yonezu is recognized as a theme song composer for the anime Chainsaw Man. Although his compositions are not nearly as disorganized as his younger works, the messages and thought-provoking, poetic nature of his lyrics remain. His songs focus on themes of guilt, loss, emotional change, personal growth, and overcoming hardships.

wowaka started his solo career in music in 2009. Despite being a total beginner at music production, his debut song "In The Gray Zone" was met with resounding praise from netizens.
Between 2009 and 2011, wowaka would release four separate VOCALOID albums, with his last one, Unhappy Refrain, being a collage album of his proudest works and remixes created by friends in the community. Afterwards, he focused his efforts towards his newly-formed band, hitorie, where he acted as the lead singer.
wowaka's songs, for the time, were completely unordinary. In a vast sea of cutesy, funny pop songs, wowaka's dischordant, fast compositions paired with emotionally-charged words were a sound to behold. The music videos were also paired with abstract and monochrome works, void of any human or character, adding to the unique charm of wowaka's work. Even today, I fail to come up with another vocal synth producer who has even a fraction of his musical signature. Regardless, wowaka was nothing short of an icon of the vocal synth community.
After dedicating many years to hitorie, wowaka posted what would be his final VOCALOID work for Miku's 10th anniversary in 2017: Unknown Mother Goose. Though the production quality vastly improved due to the assistance of his bandmates, it retained the same charm as his old work. It is currently wowaka's most viewed VOCALOID song, with over 70 million views.
On April 5th, 2019, it was announced that wowaka died of heart failure at age 31. A legendary producer had left us, with only his melodic memory remaining. To honor his memory and the unmistakable impact of his work, at least one of his songs have been featured in most official Hatsune Miku concerts, starting as early as 2019 at Japan's Magical Mirai 2019 concert. To the right, the first memorial performance at Magical Mirai is featured. Please take a look, and enjoy the music wowaka has left us.

Jin, sometimes known as "ShizennoTeki-P" (lit. enemy of nature), is a vocal synth producer who has been active in the community since 2011. His first two albums, "Mekakucity Actors" and "Mekakucity Daze" are interconnected and stand as his golden contributions to the VOCALOID community. Mekakucity Actors and Mekakucity Daze follow a storyline of ten kids with magic abilities granted to them by snakes. However, their consequence for obtaining these abilities requires them to stay trapped in a time loop while being constantly pursued by a mysterious individual with their same abilities. The time loop resets if one of them dies, sending all of them back to August 15th. This story would eventually become known as The Kagerou Project.
Kagerou Project is one of the earliest productions of vocal synth-based storytelling albums. Its popularity grew so immense that it spawned official anime, movie, light novel, and manga adapations. The most well-known song of the series, Kagerou Daze (Heat Haze Daze), has been performed at official Hatsune Miku concerts as well. Various song remixes and fan-made animated music videos have been created, too.
In 2018, Jin would release a third special album tied to the Kagerou Project, titled "Mekakucity Reload". Similarly to the first two albums, Mekakucity Reload's tracks tend to focus on the individual characters and their experiences after becoming trapped within the time loop.
In the present day, Jin continues to produce vocal synth music. He often composes commissioned tracks for a Hatsune Miku-involved rhythm game, Project Sekai: Colorful Stage. He also collaborates with Miku's parent company and other producers frequently. He composed Colorful Stage's third anniversary song, NEO, as well as the Hatsune Miku x Pokemon: Project Voltage song, JUVENILE.

"DAEMON/DOLL" was an anniversary album created in collaboration with several well-known Vocal Synth Producers from the English-speaking side. It was created to commemorate Kasane Teto's upgrade to Synthesizer V Studio in 2023. Kasane Teto was one of the most widely-recognizable UTAU voices and designs on the web, and many people expressed wishes of Kasane Teto eventually getting updated to the VOCALOID program (which remained the most popular synth program choice until SynthV). Hatsune Miku's company, Crypton Future Media, had already showcased a 3D model of Teto in their rhythm game, Project Diva, so there were hopes of this dream coming true.
The announcement of Kasane Teto's Synthesizer V voicebank was met with resounding cheer. She finally did it! After years of being nothing but a much-loved joke, she finally felt... official. She was more than a joke. And that she is, and continues to be, more than what lies at her roots.
The DAEMON/DOLL album aimed not to trample over the humble beginnings of Kasane Teto, but rather embrace them, and lead listeners on a journey from her beginning to the new era she stands at now. Each of the ten base tracks are composed by ten different musicians in the community, with the tenth track, "Machine Love" by Jamie Paige, serving to tie everything all together. It is a tribute to one of Kasane Teto's more iconic songs, "Song of the Eared Robot" by nwp8861. The music video is a colorful collage of both the music videos of songs on DAEMON/DOLL, as well as other popular Kasane Teto-sung songs. It is also a testament to the love, compassion, collaboration, and inspiration that fuels the vocal synth community as a whole.