Many musicians over the past few years have started to adopt the practice of hiding their identities. From Daft Punk to MF Doom, there have been artists that decide to hide their face while creating their music. This has led to an interesting dynamic between the fans and the artists themselves that hasn’t been shown in previous years.
There have been many interpretations of hiding one’s identity for music in the past. One of the best examples is the band KISS, who covered their faces in paint during their shows. Just because a musician decides to hide their face behind paint doesn’t mean that they are hiding their full identity.
A band called Daft Punk hid their faces behind robotic masks for their entire career. However, they didn’t hide their full identities and even shared one of their names in a song called “Giorgio by Moroder” where a member of the band talks about his upbringing and how he decided to form Daft Punk.
In a similar way to Daft Punk there was an artist who went by many different aliases, but his main alias was Doom. Daniel Dumile was the person behind the musicians called MF Doom and King Geedorah. Dumile viewed MF Doom more as a character than anyone could play rather than his own personal creation.
The newest mainstream artist that has started to follow in the footsteps of hiding their identity is a rapper that goes by the name Leikeli47.
Due to being comparatively new to the music scene to other artists there is very little known about Leikeli. Currently all that is known is that she was raised in Virginia and New York when she was younger.
At a concert in Boise, Idaho someone was holding an MF Doom mask up in the air and following a song Leikeli pointed it out and started talking about how artists such as MF Doom and Daft Punk were the inspiration behind her wearing a mask as well.
In the past few years, there has been an uprise in musicians using stage names rather than their own like in previous decades. In conjunction with stage names, there has been an uprise of more artists hiding their faces or identities.
Artists feel as though they can take on a persona of a character when they put on a mask. Whether that persona is someone they wish they could be, or someone that they want to hide from themselves, is up to the artist.
The idea of hiding one’s identity is also very appealing in the age of social media and fan pages trying to stalk artists or figure out every aspect of their lives. Hiding one’s identity allows that artist to create music that they love without the fear of it being connected to their personal life and possibly impacting relationships with family or friends.
As the music industry starts to lean more towards electronically recorded music, as well as COVID-19 creating a gap in time where large scale concerts weren’t happening, there will be an uprise in newer artists hiding their faces and identities from the world.
Connor Anderson can be reached at [email protected]