The 20 Best Alter Egos in Pop Music History

In 1967, The Beatles created one of their most acclaimed and beloved albums by deciding not to be The Beatles. They had already retired from touring and gotten away from the screaming fans, but were able to enhance their creativity in the studio by getting away from their usual identities and inhabiting the characters of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Other than the psychedelic marching band outfits and the name Billy Shears (which Paul addresses Ringo as in one song), there’s not a lot of detail to who exactly the Lonely Hearts Club Band is. But the concept was enough to let the Fab Four forget themselves a little bit and simply make a great album.

From Aladdin Sane to the Thin White Duke, nobody in pop music has adopted more alter egos more memorably than David Bowie. And it all started with Ziggy Stardust, the bisexual alien rock star that David Robert Jones became five albums after beginning his career as David Bowie. The 1972 concept album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, was a major breakthrough for David Bowie, but he soon continued shape shifting into other personas and other stories for his long, unpredictable career.

It’s not like Prince ever needed technological help or a conceptual conceit to sing high or address the nuances of sexuality in his music. But in 1986, he began to artificially pitch his voice higher to sing from a female perspective, recording a whole album’s worth of songs for what was conceived as the self-titled debut by his alter ego, Camille. That album was shelved, but many of its tracks ended up on Prince releases, including the hit “If I Was Your Girlfriend” and its B-side “Shockadelica.” Later, Camille appeared with the other alter egos Bob George and Spooky Electric on another shelved project, The Black Album.

In the ’70s, David Johansen was a cross-dressing proto-punk trailblazer as the frontman of the New York Dolls. In the late ’80s, he underwent an unlikely and hugely successful career invention by putting on a tuxedo, combing his hair up into a pompadour, and becoming a campy lounge singer named Buster Poindexter. Powered by the popularity of a cover of “Hot Hot Hot,” he released four Buster Poindexter albums over the course of a decade, and frequently appeared on Saturday Night Live in character. But eventually, Johansen tired of the character, and went back to making music under his own name and with the reunited New York Dolls.

Digital Underground frontman Shock G assumed many identities on the group’s playfully eccentric albums. But one of them, a big-nosed goofball in Groucho glasses named Humpty Hump, ultimately became a bigger celebrity than Shock G himself when his theme song, “The Humpty Dance,” became the group’s biggest hit. Always maintaining his sense of humor, Shock G frequently made public appearances in the nose and glasses, playfully pretending to encourage the illusion that Humpty and Shock G were two different people.

In creating and promoting the 1991 album Achtung Baby, U2 reinvented their sound and image with danceable beats and a flashy, ironic sensibility. And in the lengthy Zoo TV tour launched to promote the album, and which carried over into the 1993 follow-up Zooropa, Bono fleshed out that reinvention by becoming several characters onstage. Those alter egos included The Fly, Mirror Ball Man, and most memorably, MacPhisto, a flashy devil with horns, pale pancake makeup, and a gold suit.

The last album Tupac Shakur recorded before being fatally gunned down in September 1996 was also the first he made under a name other than 2Pac. The alias Makaveli had already been introduced on the album All Eyez On Me, and on the album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, Makaveli rapped about many of the same things 2Pac rapped about and even took aim at 2Pac’s known rivals. But by taking a name inspired by Machiavelli, the 16th-century writer whose political treatise The Prince was released after his own death, 2Pac left behind Makaveli as a provocative enigma that would inspire of years of speculation and conspiracy theories that Shakur’s death was a hoax.

After several years of leading the Ultramagnetic MCs, Kool Keith created the character of Dr. Octagon, a time-traveling OB/GYN, for his 1995 solo single “Earth People.” A year later, the album Dr. Octagonecologyst became a landmark release for underground hip-hop. But instead of continuing to work with the album’s producer Dan the Automator on more Dr. Octagon projects, Kool Keith recorded a series of albums with other, less successful alter egos including Dr. Dooom and Black Elvis.

Eminem’s first independent album, The Infinite, was a painfully earnest affair, containing some of the technical skill of his later efforts but little of the comedy, insanity, and envelope-pushing violence that made him a star. Those elements, for the most part, came into view when he adopted an alter ego for 1997’s The Slim Shady EP and later 1999’s The Slim Shady LP. Since then, the album covers have usually said Eminem, and his driver’s license says Marshall Mathers, but if he’s spitting fast, and funny rhymes about terrible, disgusting things, it’s Slim Shady talking.

By the end of the ’90s, Garth Brooks had become one of the most hugely successful stars in country music, or music in general. But he craved a change to earn respect in other arenas, as a rocker and as an actor, and planned a feature film, The Lamb, in which he’d play a moody alternative rock musician. Brooks recorded an album in the persona, Garth Brooks in… The Life of Chris Gaines, and appeared on the cover with black hair and a soul patch. But the silly alter ego didn’t convince anybody and the album sold a fraction of other Garth Brooks projects, resulting in the film idea being shelved.

Often, the members of famous bands go off and work on side projects to show another side of their creativity. But Green Day has a different way of doing that: all three members of the band occasionally get together and make music very unlike Green Day, release it under a different name, and try to keep that other band’s true identity secret for as long as possible. In 2003, they released the album Money Money 2020 as a Devo-like band called The Network. And in 2008, they pulled a similar stunt, releasing a garage rock album under the name Foxboro Hot Tubs. All the while, Billie Joe Armstrong denied any connection to either band, but it all just felt like a playful put-on.

My Chemical Romance’s third album, The Black Parade, was something like a goth/emo answer to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The New Jersey quintet donned black marching band outfits, with frontman Gerard Way dying his hair blonde, for a rock opera about the death of a cancer patient. The band toured in full alter ego regalia for the video for the crossover hit “Welcome to the Black Parade” and a lengthy tour in support of the album. Then, they hung up the uniforms and took on the alias of yet another band for one more album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, before deciding to disband My Chemical Romance altogether in 2013.

Mary J. Blige may have been minted the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul” early on, but for most of her career, she’s been content to sing her heart out over hard, rap-influenced beats without actually trying to rhyme. But when Jay Z penned a guest verse for Foxy Brown to perform on Mary’s song “Enough Cryin’,” Fox’s hearing loss issues prevented her from recording it. So Mary created the rapping persona Brook Lynn and stepped into the booth to record the Shawn Carter-penned bars on the 2006 hit, and continued to rap as Brook Lynn on other songs like the all-star remix of “Touch It” by Busta Rhymes.

Many artists may have recorded albums under alter egos, but only one has released an album actually called Alter Ego. Tyrese Gibson has had huge success as a singer, model, and actor, but in 2006 he decided to establish himself as a rapper. The 2006 double album Alter Ego featured one disc by the R&B singer Tyrese, and one disc by the rapper Black-Ty. Tyrese sang ballads written by R. Kelly and Bryan-Michael Cox, and Black-Ty traded rhymes with Method Man and Too $hort. Alter Ego was the lowest selling Tyrese album, and none of the songs from the Black-Ty half ever charted.

Clifford Harris began rapping under the name T.I.P. before signing to Arista Records and shortening his name to T.I. out of deference to his label mate Q-Tip. But he established the idea that his two rapping handles represented two different people on track “T.I. vs. T.I.P.” from his second album, 2003’s Trap Muzik. And he revisited that theme for his fifth album, with T.I. vs. T.I.P. and its promotional campaign revolving around the idea that T.I. and his alter ego T.I.P. were two very different, contrasting personalities. But they both pretty much looked, acted, and rapped the same (T.I. seemed to dress more formally, at least), and the concept seemed to confuse the public a little.

For Beyoncé, Sasha Fierce wasn’t just an alias, it was a coping mechanism, a way to step into the spotlight and instantly transform into a bold, confident performer at the drop of a hat. “I have someone else that takes over when it’s time for me to work and when I’m on stage, this alter ego that I’ve created that kind of protects me and who I really am,” she once explained. Her 2000 album I Am… Sasha Fierce used the contrast between Beyoncé and her alter ego as an organizing principle for a double album, with I Am… including gentle, vulnerable songs like “If I Were A Boy” and “Halo” while Sasha Fierce took over for anthemic tracks like “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” and “Diva.”

Nicki Minaj is a woman of a thousand voices and a thousand costume changes, rapping in odd accents and sometimes giving the voice its own name, wig and backstory. The most famous of these was Roman Zolanski, a British gay man she first rapped as on the Trey Songz hit “Bottoms Up,” and then revived on songs like “Roman’s Revenge,” “Roman Holiday” and “Roman Reloaded.”

“You And I” is one of Lady Gaga’s most personal songs, a ballad about her ex-boyfriend Luc Carl. But when it came time to promote the song as Born This Way’s fourth single, Gaga decided to temper that vulnerability with a bit of stagecraft, dressing in drag to create a male counterpart, Jo Calderone, who starred in the song’s video and appeared on the single cover. Opening the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Jo Calderone gave a lengthy, strange monologue about Lady Gaga before performing the track.

In the late ’90s, Snoop Doggy Dogg shortened his name to simply Snoop Dogg. But a couple years ago, he decided to switch up to a different species altogether, renaming himself Snoop Lion to celebrate a conversion to Rastafarianism and an album of reggae and dub tracks. Snoop Lion drew criticism from reggae legend Bunny Wailer, and the album Reincarnated wound up one of the lowest selling releases of Snoop’s long career. But it did win a Grammy for best reggae album.

Like many young R&B stars, Jhené Aiko takes great inspiration from hip-hop, and even switches things up from time to time to rap instead of singing. But she recently took that versatility one step further by giving a name and alternate identity to her rapping persona: J Henny, a.k.a. J Hennessy. J Henny made her official debut on a version of the track “Stay Ready (What a Life),” replacing Kendrick Lamar’s verse from the original track. As Aiko explained in an interview, “She likes to really talk a lot of shit and talk about things that a lot of R&B singers don’t talk about.”