Bio : Ado

Japanese artist Ado always seeks out a challenge.

The burgeoning J-pop force spent 2024 pushing beyond her boundaries abroad and at home.
She embarked on her first world tour, bringing her to sold-out venues across Asia, Europe and
North America. Right after, Ado hosted a pair of shows at the Japan National Stadium,
becoming the first female artist to perform there. Starting in the summer, she completed a
nationwide jaunt.

“I was running from the start of the year, and I’m still running,” the 22-year-old Ado says. “Every
year it feels like I’m updating myself into a richer version of who I am. This year I’ve been able to
experience and grow, and people have been able to see me grow at live shows.”

Her drive to keep growing continues as an already busy year nears its end. Ado is taking part in
collaborations allowing her to further expand her sound, while also flexing her own confidence in
songwriting. She’s prepping to once again share her work capturing both the angst and
optimism of younger generations globally, having recently announced her second world tour
“Hibana” which will find Ado going to cities old and new for her in Asia, Europe and North
America alongside her first trips to Australia and South America in the summer of 2025.

“I still believe in the possibility and future I could bring, and I want to use this moment to build for
the future,” Ado says.

The first step towards the next chapter of Ado’s story comes via “Sakura Biyori to Time Machine
/ Shoka,” her latest single — and first to be released on CD. The prior song finds her
collaborating with virtual singer Hatsune Miku, an artist meaning a lot to Ado, whose gateway to
music came via Vocaloid, a singing-synthesizer software released in the late 2000s, while she
was in elementary school. Miku served as an avatar for this world, and inspired Ado to become
an utaite, a Japanese term for someone covering Vocaloid songs with their real voice.

“I wanted to do something special at the Japan National Stadium show this past spring, so I
came up with the idea to do a one-time only collaboration with someone special. Who would be
the perfect person to share that huge stage with?” she says. “I wanted it to be Miku. It was like a
dream come true.”

The other song, meanwhile, places the spotlight purely on Ado. “Shoka” first started taking form
when Ado was 16. “I wasn’t confident to release what I had written from scratch, because there
are so many great ideas online that I worried I’d be seen as copying them, or that what I did
wasn’t good enough. I locked it away.”

Since 2020, Ado’s had plenty of reasons for her self-confidence to grow. Her thunderous first
single “Usseewa” topped multiple charts in the country, garnered hundreds of millions of
YouTube views and cemented itself as a defining number of the early 2020s. Follow-up
numbers “Readymade” and “Odo” further established her status while highlighting her vocal
range, leading up to her 2022 album Kyougen, which debuted at number one on multiple
domestic charts.

After, Ado crossed over into the world of film, providing the singing voice to the character UTA in
the 2022 film ONE PIECE FILM RED, the latest full-length offering from the globally beloved
ONE PIECE series and that year’s highest-grossing Japanese film. The driving song “New
Genesis” in particular thrived, even landing at number one on Apple Music’s Top 100: Global
chart, becoming the first Japanese song ever to accomplish this feat. She didn’t slow down in
2023, scoring another massive hit with the fall’s “Show.”

Despite all these accomplishments, Ado’s personal journey towards confidence has taken time,
and she says it still has a long way to go. With the heavy “Shoka,” though, she wanted to show
a new, more emboldened side of herself, which also includes her playing guitar, including during
select shows on her just-wrapped-up Japan tour.

“I had always wanted to play guitar, and got one at age 13, but I always felt that I wasn’t good
enough, so I didn’t play it. Similar to songwriting, I wanted to show new possibilities of Ado, so I
restarted by playing it and writing.”

Even more opportunities await. In December, Ado will release the song “Episode X,” which finds
her working with Ayase, a celebrated Vocaloid producer and one half of fellow new-era J-pop
project YOASOBI. “It’s a long-awaited collaboration that I’m happy could happen. I’ve been
covering Ayase’s songs, both his solo and YOASOBI works, and I’ve enjoyed listening to him all
my life.”

“Episode X” will mark an important moment for Japanese music in the 2020s, with two of the
most important creators in the country coming together at a time when they both are helping to
spread the nation’s sound to the world. That will also set Ado up nicely for her second world tour
starting in late April 2025. The five-continent jaunt, taking place in large arenas, is one of the
biggest world tours ever undertaken by a J-pop artist, let alone one still in her early 20s, pointing
towards Ado’s greater ambitions.

“I want to show everyone how much I’ve grown since the first world tour. Of course, there’s a
language barrier, but I want to get over it to make the moment special,” she says. “Hopefully,
they’ll leave the show feeling like it was the best night of their lives.”