Ado will release her cover of Metallica‘s ‘Enter Sandman’ on ‘Ado’s Utattemita Album Vol. 2’, the second instalment of her fan-request cover album series, on December 23rd. The song is one of three tracks confirmed so far, alongside ‘Kuchibashi ni Cherry’ by EGO-WRAPPIN’ and the Vocaloid song ‘Mousou Shikkan ■ Girl’.
Ado first performed the cover in August, using it to open and close her debut SUMMER SONIC headline sets at ZOZO Marine Stadium in Chiba on August 15th and Expo ’70 Commemorative Park in Osaka on August 16th.
Within a day of the Tokyo show, the cover was trending on social media in Japan. On August 18th, Metallica praised it on X in a post viewed more than 8.6 million times.
RELATED: Metallica praise Ado for ‘Enter Sandman’ cover at SUMMER SONIC debut
Anyone who wasn’t there had little to go on. Filming wasn’t allowed during her sets and no official footage or audio was released, so short fan-shot clips from Osaka circulated instead. In the days and weeks that followed, fans kept asking for a video or recording, and now the album will finally give them their first opportunity to hear the cover officially.
Her live covers have made it onto record before. Ado sang TK from Ling tosite sigure’s ‘unravel’ on her 2023 Mars tour, and it was released on November 15th that year ahead of ‘Ado’s Utattemita Album’.
That album contained ten covers, including Sheena Ringo’s ‘Tsumi to Batsu’ and PinocchioP’s ‘Kamippoi na’. It debuted at No. 2 on Oricon’s weekly albums chart in December 2023 and climbed to No. 1 on Billboard Japan’s Hot Albums chart in January 2024.
Universal Music Japan opened song requests for the follow-up in June, asking fans to choose a genre and name one song for Ado to sing. Western music joined J-pop and Vocaloid as an option for the first time.
Of the other confirmed tracks, ‘Kuchibashi ni Cherry’ harks back to before Ado’s major debut. EGO-WRAPPIN’ wrote the song as the theme for the 2002 TV drama Shiritsu Tantei Hama Maiku, and Ado recorded it as an assignment song in 2020. Cloud Nine president Takuya Chigira shared the story when that recording was published on YouTube in March.
“Six years ago, I gave a 17-year-old girl calling herself Ado 16 assignment songs and asked her to sing them in the studio. More than half were songs she didn’t know or had never sung. Her debut hadn’t even been decided yet. Until then, she had recorded alone, shut away in a studio or a closet, so that day was the first time I actually saw her sing.”
‘Mousou Shikkan ■ Girl’ takes the album back to Nico Nico Douga, where Ado began her career by posting a cover of Kuwagata-P’s ‘Kimi no Taion’ on January 10th, 2017. Singer-songwriter Moja wrote and composed the track, while Vocaloid producer rerulili arranged it and tuned GUMI’s vocal for its 2014 upload.
‘Ado’s Utattemita Album Vol. 2’ is out on CD on December 23rd in a standard edition and a limited first edition with an acrylic stand and sticker. Pre-orders are now open.
Ado
Ado’s Utattemita Album Vol. 2
Release Date: 23/12/2026
Label: Universal Music
Pre-order: Regular | Limited Edition
About Ado
Ado is a Tokyo-born singer and utaite who emerged from Japan’s online cover-song scene to become one of the country’s biggest international artists. She began uploading covers in 2017 and made her major debut at 17 with 'Usseewa' in 2020. The song became a huge hit in Japan and introduced the vocal style that has become central to her music, shifting from whispers and deep growls to screams and rapid-fire delivery. Ado has remained visually anonymous throughout her career, usually performing in silhouette and using illustrated characters in place of a public-facing image. Her debut album, 'Kyougen', arrived in 2022, the same year she reached a wider audience as the singing voice of Uta in One Piece Film: Red. Songs including 'New Genesis', 'Backlight', and 'Fleeting Lullaby' joined a catalogue that already included 'Gira Gira' and 'Odo'. Her music has moved freely through Vocaloid-influenced pop, electronic music, rock, rap, and heavier experimental territory, with collaborators including Giga, TeddyLoid, Yasutaka Nakata, Vaundy, natori, MARETU, and Kikuo. Her second original album, 'Zanmu', followed in 2024, with the 40-track 'Ado's Best Adobum' marking five years since her major debut in 2025. Ado's live career has grown just as quickly. Her first world tour, 'Wish', travelled across Asia, Europe, and the United States in 2024, including a sold-out UK debut at London's Troxy. Weeks later, she became the first female solo artist to headline Japan's National Stadium, performing to more than 140,000 people across two nights. She returned overseas in 2025 with 'Hibana', a 33-city world tour across five continents that drew more than 500,000 fans and included a sold-out show at The O2 in London. Ado has also moved into artist production with the horror-inspired idol group Phantom Siita. In 2026, she signed with WME for representation outside Japan, performed at Lollapalooza in Chicago, and headlined SUMMER SONIC in Japan. Despite the increasingly large stages, her roots in utaite and Vocaloid culture are still easy to trace. Her career has been built around the strength and versatility of her voice, with her identity kept deliberately out of view.
