By Annika Inampudi ‘21, Arts and Entertainment Writer

The first thing that you notice when you look at country musician Orville Peck’s face is his eyes. They’re the only part of his face that you can see behind the “Lone Ranger” mask that he wears in public. He’s a strange amalgamation of American culture– a mixture of the bare-bones cowboy and new-age opulence. His debut album, Pony, is chock-full of haunting, old West style ballads with modern lyrics, and his recent feature as Apple’s “Up Next” Artist has garnered him a large social media following. This blend of style and genre has fans of all ages and backgrounds flocking to his shows. As an openly gay man in the country music industry, Peck’s concerts are filled with every kind of person– from drag queens to indie teenagers. But everyone’s fascination with the country star begins with the mask. 

The anonymous artist is not a new concept. From Daft Punk to Banksy, we’ve always been obsessed with the celebrities that withhold information about their true lives. It’s human nature: the inherent curiosity to learn more about someone you admire. Artists put so much of their life and emotion into their work, it’s almost jarring when you realize that this person is a complete stranger. Celebrities and artists, grappling with this parasocial relationship, fall on a spectrum of anonymity. Some artists use their fame to become icons, others completely disappear. In an age where total openness is expected of celebrities, anonymity is jarring. Especially with the internet and social media blurring the line between career and lifestyle for many young celebrities, privacy is a foreign concept. With the advent of social media, celebrities are incentivized to showcase their private lives in a highly curated way– stylized breakfast shots, small chats on instagram stories. Maybe the point is that we can be the most vulnerable when we are unburdened by surface level descriptors, like a name. 

Italy’s leading contender for a Nobel Prize in Literature, Elena Ferrante, refuses to state any personal information about herself, apart from the fact that she was “born in Naples.” Even away from the artistic world, anonymous celebrities capture people’s attention. The inventor of BitCoin completely revolutionized our conception of economics, but still remains under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. In some ways, their anonymity allows us to consume their work on its own, without being clouded by extra context. Nobody would believe the legend of Orville Peck if they knew where he was born or what his real name was. To be larger than life, we must give up a little bit of the mundanity of our lives. 

In her anti-fame manifesto, the singer-songwriter Sia writes, “If anyone besides famous people knew what it was like to be a famous person, they would never want to be famous.”  Sia herself maintains privacy during public events, donning a huge blonde wig for all of her musical performances. A lot of the time, these anonymous celebrities seem to have the best of both worlds: the money and power, without any of the invasion of privacy. Perhaps this is where the allure of anonymity truly comes from: the simple human desire to exist on your own terms, to be able to control the way that everyone sees you. Of his anonymity, Peck says: “Whether or not Orville was the name I was born with is irrelevant. I understand there is a temptation to try and unmask what I do, but to do so would be to miss the point entirely.”