Who needs a singer?

The computer-assisted singing cyborgs were nearly there, now we can go all the way with
Lola the Virtual Soul Vocalist. The funny thing is that the rhetoric sounds a lot like that used to sell sex dolls (not that I, uh, know much about that...):

LOLA is a virtual female soul vocalist modelled on a real professional singer, and when she is installed into your PC she will allow you to create synthesized singing of unprecedented quality and realism. LOLA will sing ANY words you ask her to in English... LOLA is under your total control... You can CONTROL and PERFORM your OWN private virtual professional soul vocalist.... What will YOU make LOLA sing?... She can sing over a superb pitch range, she can sing much faster than a human could if you want her to, as fast as you like in fact, and she can jump any interval yet hit every note beautifully, IF that's want YOU want her to do. And she'll NEVER tire or complain.

Most shocking is this:

You can add HUMANITY to ANY production in ANY style without needing a human.

Pesky humans!

Of course, they also underline the real interest (IMO) of this kind of thing:

you can live in the exciting world between human and machine, where LOLA can even provide vocals that sound like they were performed by a superhuman virtuoso android. Using Vocaloid in this way, as a true hybrid of human voice and synthesizer, the potential for innovation is limited only by your own imagination.

Replacing human by machine simply to save money or attain sterile perfection is a scarily industrial way of thinking, but I would be interested to see what could be achieved with a more hybrid approach. It could be that just as drummers have been influenced by drum machines, singers could end up being influenced by their software counterparts.

It's worth checking out the demos page. Setting aside the fact that the songs suck (although "Freaky Sheep" is kind of fun), the voices are rather scarily realistic.