Earlier in the week I tweeted a truly fascinating The New Yorker article exploring how urban pop music is constructed. Let’s continue looking at this theme with the latest PBS Idea Channel episode, which asks the question: is Miku Hatsune a more authentic Pop Star than Lana Del Rey?

Lana Del Rey might be “The Girl Who Launched a Thousand Blog Posts” but we think there might be something else really interesting here. How is it that she, a real person, pales in Pop Star Comparison to a computer program? With the rise of Miku Hatsune, a computer generated pop star from Japan, and the recent kerfuffle surrounding Lana Del Rey’s album release, we take a look at what it means to be authentic in today’s music world. Is Miku Hatsune, a piece of software, more authentic than human being Lana Del Rey?

Hosted by Mike Rugnetta
Made by Kornhaber Brown 

Previously on the Idea Channel:

Super Mario Brothers Is The World’s Greatest Piece Of Surrealist Art