Is Realize Music: Sing Really What The Doctor Dre Ordered?

Mental health is one of the greatest struggles of our modern society. Anxiety and depression are at an all-time high. I'm personally still working through burnout recovery, as well as general self-care and wellness. As such, you can imagine I'll sit up and take notice whenever a game or app is trying to help ease people's struggles.

Trying being the key word there, since Realize Music: Sing struggles a lot and despite its ambitious aims, I'm not sure what the end goal truly was. It's complicated, let's get into it.

I'll cut to the chase – Realize Music: Sing is a VR singing game. Yes, it's called an app, an “immersive experience,” but you score points. The points enhance the reactivity of whatever spherical world you're playing in. There's a meter that grows based on performance. You can hammer optional drums with your controllers that, if I'm understanding the microscopic icons on your drumsticks correctly, add to that meter too. Achievements can be unlocked. It's a shame the app doesn't lean into it more, but we'll return to that later.

If it weren't for the adult-oriented music selection, boasting some examples like Linkin Park, Nickelback, Chappel Roan, Korn, and more, I'd assume this is made for kids. Why else would you have a random set of optional painting tools that serve no function other than to clutter the virtual play space? Or have most of the play spaces be very whimsical and storybook-esque? I get not wanting to set users in industrial grunge, but if I'm belting out The Emptiness Machine? I'm probably not looking to see mountains that look like they're out of The Sound of Music while I'm jamming.

Meanwhile, despite boasting “more than 1 million songs,” the album selection and curation is a mess. There are instrumental-only versions of songs. Both the normal and deluxe editions of albums are here, instead of just the deluxe, for some reason? Why are some songs inexplicably listed as individual albums? Why do some songs give a warning "This song doesn't have lyrics" even when they do, in fact, have lyrics?

Sifting through can be tedious. Every time you enter into any “album” to confirm whether it's the full music or not, it snaps you back to the start of that artist's page. I tried to find Lily Allen's hit Fuck you!, and it was a genuine challenge. Even then, the only version available is censored (even though the song's title itself isn't), further confusing who the target audience is.

Then there are stranger discrepancies. The app boasts much of Paramore's discography, while only Lady Gaga's oldest works are here. Some musicians only appear because one of their songs appears in a movie's soundtrack album. I understand that some of this will change with time, and is doubtless beyond the developers' control, yet it really sticks out.

Granted, this is provided the menu systems work. Searching for Evanescence via the voice-command search function led to a hard crash. Looking at the Similar Artists section for Katy Perry had the app claiming her music that I'd just seen available was, in fact, not actually available. When one of my old playlists got wiped for some reason, opening it froze every aspect of the app, save for the Jukebox mode. This is after patches from the first time I explored Realize months ago. It was less buggy back then, which is not commonly how this works. A release build typically has less bugs.

And yes, there's a Jukebox mode for those who just want the top hits. It's a great idea, but also serves to highlight how randomly the genres have been assigned to some artists. Alanis Morissette is not a Rock musician. Just because a guitar strums at the end of Uninvited doesn't make it rock. Don't worry though, it gets worse.

The real kicker was finding The Cranberries' world famous Zombie... under Pop. Like, if this were some obscure song, or from an artist that used to do Pop, like fellow Irish artist Imelda May, that'd be one thing. However, The Cranberries are one of the most well regarded Irish bands ever, and this is them performing their saddest ballad. It's about a decades-long conflict that caused endless despair and death for an entire nation. It is not something you put alongside Hot To Go. This should not need explaining. Why is this a thing?

Also, the UI is a mess. Why is the Jukebox mode separate from the rest of the menu system? It can only be accessed by one of two virtual buttons set so low that they practically sit on the user's feet. Accessing the rest of the app requires clicking on your Profile button, which paradoxically takes you to your Library, rather than to your account profile or settings - those require clicking on other, different buttons.

Granted, the library UI is also rather oddly arranged for a VR interface – in addition to the odd placement of the Jukebox mode's button. Some parts are cramped, others take up too much space. I can understand there being limitations on a flat screen, but this is VR, you can get more creative.

If nothing else, purely as a singing experience, Realize Music: Sing seems solid... at first. The variety of genres is good, ranging from rock and country to metal, R&B, and rap. The lyrics are presented nicely, they respond with eye-catching animations when you hit the note right, and they can even shift in place based on where you focus your gaze during a song. The drums are also really satisfying to hammer on. However, there problems here too. Thankfully not the crashing kind, at least.

Most notable is how Realize Music: Sing has more faith than I do in my ability to perform a duet all on my own. Yes, you read that right. As a Linkin Park fan, seeing In The End immediately there in Jukebox Mode, it seemed like a perfect first song to try. Except here's the thing - you aren't just singing Chester's melodic delivery, but also Mike Shinoda's rapid-fire poetry, with next to no pausing between.

This was also an issue with some pop songs, where you're sometimes expected to sing some of the backing vocals, but not all of them. Evanescence, meanwhile, had odd timing errors where Amy Lee's vocals were clearly still hanging on words that Realize Music had decided were done. At least given how passive the scoring is, you can just let it breeze by.

There's no numerical scoring system to speak of, though it does track “perfect” lyrics on your profile. The main indicators for your performance are the visual reactions of your 'world' play space. However, there are also no difficulty indicators on the music like you'd expect from a rhythm experience. Instead, it's on the user to know how intense a song will be, more than anything. It's also on them to make their own fun whenever an instrumental solo kicks in, or a song has a long intro or outro.

Now, if Realize Music: Sing were, say... a game, it could lean into this. They could incorporate either the painting or drums as a more deliberate minigame sequence. And as a live service, subscription-based platform, Realize Music: Sing certainly could embrace game-like aspects in the future. Regular updates with new songs have been promised, after all.

That is, provided the app is properly registering your singing. When testing its responsiveness to different vocal registers, sometimes Realize only recognized my audio made on delay. You can tell when it catches your vocals because little stars and gems appear out of your "mouth". Other times, without any noise being made, it would randomly indicate that I was, in fact, singing. This wasn't an issue when I first previewed the app, but unless there was a ghost singing next to me, it is now a concern. The result is less Guitar Hero, more Rock Revolution, for my rhythm gaming aficionados out there.

Yet even when it's running in its most ideal state, Realize Music: Sing never really justifies its own existence. It promises an immensely unique, emotionally restoring experience, yet it… doesn't? And I kept looking for something, anything – a distinct angle, or a meaningful hook. What sets this app apart from just singing along to a song lyric video on YouTube's VR mode in your VR headset?

It's not a bad time in VR by any measure: the stationary/room-scale nature of the spherical play area ensures that, with the drums and UI following you as you walk and turn. I'm simply not grasping the point. There are some basic community features like the ability to share playlists that can be upvoted by other users. Though I was unable to test it myself, I'm told you can cast your feed to your friends for long-distance karaoke nights. That sounds lovely, but you can already do this too with something like Discord and any existing music streaming platform as well.

There is one aspect that will be a big gripe for some though – you have to manually sign in every single time you restart the app. This includes both intentionally or due to the Realize crashing spontaneously. If you don't have that password memorized, you'll be juggling a headset half on your head while checking it with one hand and entering it with the other holding a controller. This is a UI design problem that's long been solved, why is this a thing here?

Moreover, I'd really love to know why the painting system is here, because it has had a fair bit of UI design work implemented... to what end? You can't save your paintings or export them. If you could, then that could be an angle too. Art therapy is a thing. Even the name raises questions. Realize Music: Sing? What does that mean? What are we realizing? How does the owl factor in?

Realize feels like a project where, between the elevator pitch to final release, something was lost. Did it get me more in a musical state of mind? Absolutely - on my PC, humming along to my existing music library. As it stands, Realize Music: Sing is a curious novelty, and for some that may be enough; I just don't see how that is meant to translate into a long-term subscription service. Even if you patch out every issue and offer a glut of music, what sets this service apart?

If there was dancing and sing simultaneously, or actual vocal coaching lessons, or some additional stuff for meditation, I could see a fresh angle coming together. There is room here for something substantial. However, if it's going to grow into that, it will be in future updates and not this current vision. Realize Music: Sing may have been built with noble intentions but it's more than a few lyrics short of a platinum hit, and that's a darn shame.

Realize Music: Sing is out today on the Meta Quest platform. At launch, the app offers an introductory subscription price of $9.99 monthly or $99.99 annually.