Who doesn’t love a good, strange, and unexpected alter ego from their favorite pop star? Plenty of musicians through the years have debuted odd alter egos either for marketing purposes or as part of a concept album. Let’s look at three mainstream pop stars who had interesting alter egos of their own.
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1. Prince
Prince’s alter ego Camille was about what you’d expect for someone who liked to walk the line between the masculine and the feminine. When recording tracks under “Camille”, Prince would pitch his vocals higher for his feminine character. He invented Camille in the mid-1980s and planned to release a full album as her. Unfortunately, the album only got to the testing stage before it was scrapped. Camille wasn’t totally gone, though. Prince went on to use material for the scrapped album in a number of albums, particularly Sign O’ The Times.
2. Beyoncé
Pop star Beyoncé was inevitably going to make this list of alter egos with Sasha Fierce. Probably one of the most well-known alter egos of this generation, Sasha Fierce was Bey’s personal expression of sex and aggression. She said in interviews that she would “become” Sasha when she needed to be as bold as possible on stage. Eventually, she “killed” the character and said she no longer needs to pretend to be someone else in order to be confident.
3. Lady Gaga
This strange experiment with the masculine and feminine didn’t quite hit the same way Prince’s Camille did. Lady Gaga invented the male Italian-American greaser Jo Calderone in 2010 and portrayed him in a number of photo shoots, music videos, and the 2011 MTV VMAs. The character was polarizing and a little confusing, as fans weren’t entirely sure what the point of the character was. The execution wasn’t great, and the character hasn’t been seen since.
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4. Madonna
When you think about it, Madonna has had quite a few alter egos through the years. She’s changed her image and style constantly since the 1980s. That being said, her late 2010s character Madame X seemed to be a true alter ego. The character was a secret agent, a dancer, a housekeeper, a nun, and more. She was also the theme of the 2019 album Madame X.
Photo by Michael Campanella
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