These music groups don't exist! From squirrels to AI, this is the story of "virtual bands"

For years, the world of music was something very simple: you took a song, covered it your way with your friends, released an album and, with luck, managed to become a social phenomenon. Nowadays, however, things have changed; trends are not the same, and you don’t even need to have people playing with you or, in fact, for them to be real at all. The phenomenon of virtual bands seems to be on the rise, but it has actually been with us since the late 50s. Pay attention to the path we’ve taken since then, because it’s spectacular.

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Squirrels in the nets

It all started in 1958, when singer David Seville modified his own voice in the song Witch Doctor to make it sound “chipmunk-like” with very high pitches and a faster speed than usual. It was a huge success, and thus, the trio that first accompanied him on stage and later flew on its own: Alvin and the Chipmunks. Although you may only know them from the film adaptations, the truth is that from the end of that decade until now, they have released more than fifty albums, each time of much more questionable quality.

Alvin and the Chipmunks ended up being a television series, had several video games, comics, and even went on four tours across the United States from 1984 to 2015. And, indeed, they have more Grammys than many artists. Seeing the situation, there were quite a few who jumped on the bandwagon to make “chipmunk” songs, trying to pursue a market where there weren’t that many people.

An example was the Nutty Squirrels, who also had a television series (even before Alvin and the Chipmunks) and released their last album in 1964. The album included a cover of, among other things, A Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles. Quite something. The world of singing mascots was put on hold for a moment until someone thought, “Hey, what if instead of squirrels, there are many more animals?”

From comic to reality

Said and done. In 1968, the Banana Splits were born in a Hanna-Barbera television series with their name: they were four animals dressed in hilarious costumes. And no, they weren’t just cartoons: they were also people dressed in plush suits playing songs. They even released several albums, although they were never famous enough to go on tour. However, very recently they had a reboot as a horror movie. Hey, you never know where success lies.

It was during this time that virtual bands finally had their moment of glory, emerging from the least musical medium possible: comics. The Archies (formed in the animated series that adapted the Archie comics) tried to adapt the success of The Monkees to animation, and they succeeded. In fact, their influence is so significant that even in 2023 there was an Indian movie for Netflix based on them. Alongside them, another group based on a comic from the same publisher: Josie and the Pussycats.

This is a curious case, because from the nonexistent band that played in the cartoon series, a real band was formed that released several albums, had a movie in 2001, and went on several tours. From a virtual band, a real band was born, something that Marvel tried to replicate with Jubilee (unsuccessfully). As fake music bands were becoming a profitable business, dozens of cheap TV series with this idea started to emerge, from Jabberjaw (whose protagonist was a shark) to the Cattanooga Cats (four cats playing guitar, bass, drums, and vocals) or Jem and the Holograms, among many others. And of course, the market became oversaturated.

They have become aggressive

When the industry calmed down, in 1998 perhaps the epitome of virtual bands was born: Gorillaz, a group whose real face was unknown. Its members were animated characters, their music videos pure fantasies that mixed anime with the late 90s aesthetic, their lore was more than well-formed… and they even ended up touring where the real band played completely in the dark behind a giant screen showing the videos that had made them famous. At least until 2005, when they came out as a real band… and the “Gorillaz-mania” subsided a bit. To this day, they still continue to perform concerts, release albums, and were even about to shoot a movie with Netflix (which ended up being canceled). Quite something.

With modernity and the Internet, this phenomenon has increased. There are idols that don’t exist and fill stadiums (like Hatsune Miku, for instance), groups that exist in the reality of games like League of Legends, or even singers that only sound thanks to artificial intelligence. And it’s going further. We have left behind the singing chipmunks and anime music videos to focus on cybernetic figures that seem taken from a cyberpunk fantasy in which, ultimately, we move. Will the day come when no one needs to pick up a guitar and the work on tours is just pressing “play” on a video? Hopefully, we won’t see it. With even more luck, we’ll return to the era of people dressed as animals playing the guitar.

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