Reclusive Artist / Musicians

General Examples

• A lot of Black Metal bands tend to be like this. They frequently refuse to give interviews and often refuse to have their pictures taken. Most use pseudonyms and a small few don't even use names at all. Some particularly well-known examples:
  • French avant-garde black metal band Deathspell Omega are highly secretive; few photos of the members exist and, more notably, no one (apart from, presumably, the band members themselves) even knows what the complete line-up of the band is (the identity of the drummer is not even an identity of public conjecture).
  • German Black Metal / Doom Metal band (DOLCH) have an impressive take on this trope: While they do perform live, not much is known about them. The band doesn't have any social media, doesn't conduct interviews, nor is it known what their lineup is. All it's known is the band's led by a mysterious female vocalist and a guitarist (and it's impossible to know if the known photos of another guitarist, bassist, and drummer are concrete as the band doesn't list members in their releases, instead using their band logo). Asking their label Ván Records about who they are or their lack of social media is also cryptic, as they too keep secret of who they are. All that's been known is the aforementioned core members and their discography.
  • Ukrainian black metal band Drudkh refuse to have a proper public image. Only guitarist Roman Saenko has ever shown his face, and the band has never conducted personal interviews or performed live, despite being one of the most respected names in modern Black Metal. They also have not released lyrics for some of their early recordings (although this is not exactly uncommon in black metal).
• Several Vocaloid artists, to the point where occasionally a producer revealing his/her gender (such as OSTER project being female) can spark Samus Is a Girl-type reactions.

Artists A-I

• Japanese singer-songwriter Ado never shows her face in music videos and in live shows, the backlighting behind her is bright enough that no one in the audience is able to see what she looks like.
  • Her staff even issued a post on social media advising against taking pictures, videos or even using binoculars during her Wish tour, stating in no uncertain terms that if anyone is caught doing so, they would disable the "Ado Box" she performs in, preventing the audience from seeing even her silhouette. Ado and her staff are that protective of her identity.
• British singer Sade Adu has rarely been seen in the public eye since the release of Love Deluxe in 1992. She amassed a sizeable fortune but lived in total seclusion until the release of Soldier of Love in 2010. To note, a Daily Mail article noted that her promotion of that album was the first set of interviews she had done in more than a decade and that it had been eight years since she made a public appearance. She also spent most of the 2000s holed up in a mansion taking care of her son Izaak Theo and avoided any and all contact with other people.
• Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo. He lives in a very isolated area (literally a swamp in Louisiana) and refuses to have a Facebook page or even a telephone.
• Fiona Apple has made it quite known that she dislikes fame and all the trappings that it brings and stays away from the public eye. In the years between The Idler Wheel... in 2012 and Fetch the Bolt Cutters in 2020, she has remained musically productive and has shown up on the occasional collaboration or performance, in addition to writing the opening theme song of The Affair. Furthermore, Bolt Cutters was released during a pandemic so she could avoid interviews.
• Asaki of BEMANI fame is particularly reclusive, concealing his full name, having few photos of him in circulation, and never showing up to BEMANI-related events. For the Private BEMANI Academy event, all participating musicians made an appearance in the promotional video and related media...except for Asaki and his collaboration partner 96; instead of their actual faces, two stand-ins, both of which obviously look nothing like them (Asaki's stand-in, in particular, is a Caucasian person) pose as them instead.
• According to lead developer Dan Salvato, Jillian Ashcraft, Monika's voice actress and the singer of the ending song "Your Reality" in Doki Doki Literature Club!, "prefers staying private" for now. There are a few videos online of her singing (she also plays guitar), but not much else.
• Rapper Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio a.k.a Bad Bunny has stated that he likes to live a calm life that every time his concerts are done, he immediately leaves the area to avoid crowds. He disappeared from social media for a time when he was overwhelmed by his sudden rise to fame.
• Peter Banks, the original guitarist of Yes, bounced between several bands throughout the '70s and '80s. He would continue with Flash, joined by ex-Yes keyboardist Tony Kaye, before getting booted from that band. Around the same time, he recorded a solo album, Two Sides of Peter Banks, that featured his Flash bandmates along with Genesis bandmates Steve Hackett and Phil Collins, John Wetton, and Focus guitarist Jan Akkerman. He moved to the US afterward where he formed Empire with singer/wife Sidonie "Sydney Foxx" Jordan, whose work went unpublished until the mid-'90s. Jordan introduced Banks's work to Pete Townshend, who was so impressed he let them contribute "All God's Mornings" for his Meher Baba tribute album With Love. Banks went on to play sessions in Los Angeles, even contributing uncredited guitar for Lionel Richie's "Hello". While battling depression and bipolar disorder, Banks returned to the UK to take care of his family and entered seclusion after his father died. He continued recording solo albums and contributions to tribute albums but had little contact outside of his Ohio-based business partner George Mizer, producer Leigh Darlow, and his second ex-wife Cecilia Quino. A Classic Rock Magazine article says that Banks's depression led him to ignore health problems like a tumor and decaying teeth before Darlow found him at his flat dead of a heart attack in 2013. Mizer and Darlow had trouble claiming his body owing to Banks' entire immediate family being dead. Even at the time of Peter's death, his flat was listed under his late father's name in British telephone directories.
• After "leaving" Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett remained in touch with friends, including his former bandmates, up until around the mid-1970s (around six years after he left Pink Floyd) when he retreated into seclusion in a London hotel, eventually returning to Cambridge permanently in 1982. He also went back to using his given name Roger. Barrett is arguably the ultimate example of this trope. He gave his last full interview in 1971, played his last recorded gig in 1972, was last in the studio in 1974, last spoke to his former bandmates in 1975, and last willingly (and briefly) talked to the press and posed for photographs in 1982. Between then and his death in 2006, he barely communicated with the rest of the world except for members of his family and spent most of his time painting and gardening. He was often photographed by paparazzi and journalists would sometimes knock on his door in an attempt to secure some kind of interview although they would never get much more than a few terse words. He never explained why he had left the music industry or refused to talk about his past as a pop star (although it's widely believed that talking about it was distressing for him, something he alludes to in the brief 1982 "interview") and, contrary to popular belief, he was never actually diagnosed with any specific mental illness, although it's generally accepted that he had some kind of mental health problem. Ironically, whilst it's widely believed that Barrett's silence was largely because he wanted to forget about his past as "Syd" as much as possible, his status as an enigma arguably increased interest in his music rather than reduced it.
• The Beatles:
  • This fitted lead guitarist George Harrison's image as the "Quiet Beatle", as many cited he rarely gave interviews during Beatlemania and was described as being introverted. He only did two solo tours after the band broke up, played his last full concert in 1992, and his final interview occurred four years before his death (and this was one of only a few he ever did in his later years). That said, he was the only ex-Beatle to ever publish an autobiography, and he did participate in the Beatles Anthology TV series.
  • Although more active than George, this was true on some part for John Lennon during the later years of his life. However, it was mainly due to the birth of his son Sean, as he did not want to repeat the same mistakes as he did with Julian.
• Since Beyoncé parted ways with her father as her business manager in 2012, she's increasingly become more reclusive. She has only released three solo albums since then in 2013, 2016, and 2022 with the former two coming without any promotion. Previously, she released an album every other year. She gives an interview perhaps once a year and is very picky about to whom she gives the interview, usually to Vogue. She prefers to use her own social media accounts to promote her projects but even those are rarely used outside of her clothing line with Adidas and charity work. She’s notably been a lot more camera shy with her twins who were born in 2017 than she was with her oldest child, Blue, when the latter was little. She’s only shown their faces a few times on her own terms and they’ve never really been photographed in public. Even Blue, who’s now a pre-teen and therefore old enough to be out and about, won’t be seen unless she and Jay-Z want her to be seen. She took about a year and a half off due to the pregnancy with the twins being high risk that ended in an emergency c-section. She reappeared to headline Coachella in the spring of 2018 and that summer, she released a collab album with husband Jay-Z. She also curated the album for The Lion King (2019), with an accompanying film/visual album. Her seventh studio album was announced in June 2022, with a release the following month.
• Very little is known about the members of the band Black Moth Super Rainbow; all the members go by Stage Names and they rarely discuss their past in what little interviews they've done.
• David Bowie was once so accessible that he regularly communicated with his fanbase via his official website at the Turn of the Millennium. But then he slowly became this. He had not released a new album since 2003, His last tour — one cut short by a heart attack that required multiple bypass surgeries — was in 2004, and his last live performance was in 2006. A few film/TV roles and guest appearances on other artists' albums later, and that was all. He only seemed to surface for the odd premiere or charity fundraiser and didn't grant interviews. In The New '10s, it was generally accepted by fans and the music press that he quietly retired to raise his family, preserve his health, indulge in his hobbies (he paints, sculpts, and is an avowed Book Worm), and enjoy the fruits of his labors...which made January 8, 2013 something of a Wham Episode for everybody when the website was relaunched, a new album announced, and a video for its first single released. The Next Day was a huge hit, but he still would not grant interviews — longtime producer and friend Tony Visconti has said Bowie ruled out the possibility completely — and would not be going on tour to support any new releases. Any chances of this changing ended with his death three years later.
• Very little is known about Brooks & Dunn's personal lives, both on the road together (they broke up in 2010) and separately. Kix Brooks has kept himself in the spotlight as the host of American Country Countdown, while Ronnie Dunn still releases music independently, but very little is known about them outside their musical ventures.
• Buckethead. The only known pictures (there are two confirmed ones) of him out of character are over 20 years old, and he's been giving fewer and fewer "interviews" (if you can believe it) over the past 5 or so years.
• Electronic musician Burial (real name William Bevan), who preferred to remain anonymous at the time of his debut in 2006. There was quite a bit of speculation about his identity until in 2008, he posted a blog entry on his Myspace revealing his face and name, stating that he's just a normal guy who just liked to make music. Since then, he's worked with artists like Thom Yorke and Massive Attack, and still stays away from the spotlight.
• Kate Bush is a notoriously private individual, to such an extent that she moved residences several times to avert interest from passing visitors (and to thwart at least one stalker, who travelled from the U.S. to find and propose to her). She didn't tour for over 30 years between 1979 and 2014, and mostly disappeared from the public eye for the 12 years between The Red Shoes and Aerial, but has consistently said this was to give her son as normal an upbringing as possible, and not from any reclusive tendencies. Conversely, there are very few public images of her, though there are anecdotal accounts that people who have met her at a handful of private events found her to be very gracious and well-spoken. She has done relatively little promotional work even for her later releases, the most recent of which was in 2011.
• Wendy Carlos gained a reputation for this after a nervous breakdown just before a 1968 live performance motivated her to minimize her public appearances; at the time of the performance, Carlos had already begun her gender transition but was wracked with fear about how the public would respond to her identity, with the breakdown in question coming about after Carlos came to the conclusion that she had to continue disguising herself as a man. Even after she finally disclosed her identity as a trans woman in 1979 (the response to which was, to her surprise, fairly indifferent), she generally kept out of the public eye save for the occasional interview and has mostly retreated into private life following Tales of Heaven and Hell, only resurfacing when it's absolutely necessary.
• Aussie singer and Memetic Mutation Chainmale, real name Michael Freeland, is this trope, he's a very mysterious man and he hasn't released any music since the 1980s. He, however, did arrange an interview with Darryl Bullock for his book The World's Worst Records: Volume Two: Another Arcade of Audio Atrocity.
• Childish Gambino increasingly became reclusive from about 2014-2016, especially after his departure from Community. He rarely makes social media posts and in fact deleted his posts on Twitter and Instagram. He also rarely makes public appearances, in one case canceled a music festival appearance for no apparent reason. He resurfaced in late 2016 to promote his new dramedy Atlanta and after it was announced he would be joining the cast of Solo. Even now, the few appearances he makes are usually to promote something specific.
• Despite the band's popularity, and being more talkative early on, Arctic Monkeys guitarist Jamie Cook prefers to stay out of the limelight. In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, he says he "tr[ies] not to think about fame", and admits to being unnerved by how famous his own band is. He's so known by fans for his reclusiveness that several on the comments on a 2011 FaceCulture interview prominently featuring him (alongside far-more-outgoing bandmate Matt Helders) are noting his quietness, apparent boredom, and how at one point he seems to be much more interested in a small boat passing by.
• Alice Cooper used to play this up in his early days as part of his "horror show" image, staying locked up in his trailer with his boa constrictor during gigs and festivals, only emerging to perform with his band. This was, of course, just an act, and one that he later dropped.
• Carpenter Brut is known to be a Frenchman named Franck Hueso who likes horror movies, and that's about it. Even his live shows hide his appearance as much as humanly possible.
• The girls that make up the J-Pop duo ClariS (best known for performing themes to Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Nisemonogatari, among others) have done this voluntarily to keep them focused on their schoolwork. In an extreme example of this, they haven't even told anyone else outside their families about their career, either.
• Daft Punk is a mild example. While their names are common knowledge (Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo), for a long time, the only confirmed image of the duo's faces was for the front cover of an issue of the British dance music magazine◊ Muzik (which was back in 1997). Bangalter would also appear on occasion to perform DJ sets at local clubs in France. Aside from that, they were almost always hidden behind their iconic robot masks. Following the duo's disbandment, Bangalter has gradually made himself more available, with his first post-Daft Punk solo album being accompanied by interviews and his first photoshoots and public appearances unmasked since Daft Punk's early years.
• Musician and photographer Cynthia Dall, who occasionally collaborated with her then-boyfriend Bill Callahan (Smog) on some songs and recorded two albums for Drag City, six years between each (the first of which, released in 1996, was initially completely untitled with no artist information). She died in April 2012, nearly ten years after the release of her final album.
• Miles Davis took a five-year hiatus from music starting in 1975, during which, in his own words, "sex and drugs took the place music had occupied in [his] life". He barely even touched his trumpet for so long that he had to relearn the instrument when it came time for his return in 1980.
• Demon Kakka of SEIKIMA-II (and to a lesser extent most of the band's members). All we know about his true identity is his birthday, where he was born, where he attended school and university, and that his elder sister, Yumiko Kogure, is a former Tokyo Broadcasting System newscaster... and that's basically it. There's also exactly one picture◊ of him without his face paint.
• Rion Vernon, who many know as Doctor Steel, was this. All we know about his true identity is his real name, and after he retired his Doctor Steel persona, he vanished off the face of the earth for quite some time.
  • Vernon maintains a website that details his portfolio, which shows how he returned to character and production design after retiring from the music industry. He also, along with Zach Manchester, very recently (in late 2019) started a company that designs and manufactures pseudo antiques. He even appears in their introductory video. He later started a Patreon in 2021.
• Nick Drake gave only one interview during his lifetime and was reluctant to perform live, which would explain why he died in obscurity. There is no footage of him performing his songs. The only images of Drake as an adult are still photographs. At the end of his life, he moved back in with his parents and saw only a handful of friends.
• Bob Dylan has a rather...thorny relationship with the press and the public. He tours a lot but rarely grants interviews and after suffering a motorcycle crash in the late '60s barely made any public appearances at all for a number of years. He even turned down going to the original Woodstock Festival despite living in the area at the time and very nearly didn't show up to collect his Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016.^note He may have only done so because you don't collect your million-dollar prize unless you accept it in person. Dylan also got so annoyed with his fandom that he deliberately released an album of bad music so people would stop calling him "the voice of a generation."
• Jakob Dylan from The Wallflowers rarely gives interviews, mostly because he doesn't like being compared to his father Bob. This is probably why their more recent albums, as well as Jakob's solo albums, have seen a decline in sales since the smash hit Bringing Down the Horse. He's also very protective of his family and doesn't want his fame to interfere with their safety. He finally acquiesced in 2021 in order to promote the new Wallflowers album and gave a few interviews.
• Assuming he's still alive, a big assumption to make under the circumstances, guitarist and songwriter for the alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers Richey James Edwards would be one of these: he went missing in 1995 and there haven't been any confirmed sightings of him since. 13 years after he vanished, he took this trope to its Logical Extreme: he was declared "presumed deceased"—in other words, Legally Dead. The band has still been keeping his share of their royalties in a bank account since his disappearance, and continue to leave an open mic for him on-stage when performing.
• Missy Elliott, at the height of her career, simply vanished from the spotlight. In an interview, she stated that this was due to her suffering from Graves' disease coupled with stress from the loss of her friend and collaborator Aaliyah. She later got her condition under control and made a well-received appearance at Super Bowl XLIX; whether that will make her any less reclusive is up in the air.
• Eminem has never been very comfortable with the spotlight and nowadays prefers to stay home in Detroit unless he feels the need to appear in public. When his song "Lose Yourself" was nominated and won an Academy Award, he was at home dead asleep.
• While she has made a few semi-live singing appearances, and gives the occasional interview, Enya prefers to stay out of the spotlight and very rarely appears in public. Part of this can possibly be attributed to the fact that she's had stalkers in the past, some of whom have broken into her home.
• Rod Evans, the original frontman for seminal Hard Rock band Deep Purple, briefly fronted the supergroup Captain Beyond after leaving Deep Purple before retiring from the music business and going into medicine. In 1980, he was talked into reviving the Deep Purple name (Deep Purple had broken up in 1976) with a bunch of unknown musicians. When his former bandmates got wind of the venture, they immediately filed a lawsuit. Evans was not only forced to disband the "Bogus Deep Purple", the royalties from his work with the real Deep Purple were permanently cut off. With his music career in shambles, Evans returned to his medical practice and has since eschewed any contact with the media or his former bandmates—he didn't even show up when Deep Purple was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
• A long stretch of time passed by between the release of normally low-profile Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen's 1982 solo debut The Nightfly, and its 1993 followup, Kamikiriad, upon which Fagen largely laid low aside from the occasional song written for a movie soundtrack ("True Companion" from Heavy Metal; "Century's End" from Bright Lights, Big City), very sporadic songwriting for other music acts (Diana Ross, Manhattan Transfer, Yellowjackets and Jennifer Warnes, most notably) and the occasional live concert performance (usually charity shows in New York City). He began performing again with the "New York Rock'n'Soul Revue", a blues and jazz-based tour that occasionally saw him revisit some Steely Dan classics, in the late 1980's, and penned essays for Premiere magazine. After reuniting with Steely cofounder Walter Becker for Kamikiriad, the duo assembled a new band, went on the road as Steely Dan (their first tour since 1974), and have both (separately and together) kept a higher profile and constant touring ever since.
• One of the most famous examples in pop music is ABBA's Agnetha Fältskog going into a practical self-exile on a farm in Sweden from the late 1980s. She reportedly rarely speaks to anyone anymore, with the situation being worsened by her split with former stalker, Gert van der Graaf. She's even earned comparisons to Greta Garbo. She has since released an English pop solo album internationally in 2013 called A, and has since occasionally turned up to promote it and/or address ABBA reunion rumors. In 2021 she joined her other ABBA bandmates for a new album called Voyage.
• For a few years, John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers basically locked himself away in his apartment and spent most of his time doing drugs.
• Former Teen Idol Leif Garrett is a bit of a paradox —in Real Life, he's very approachable yet in the public eye, he's been known to be very reclusive and protective of his private life. He got a little better with this once he started appearing on World's Dumbest... in 2008, and now he's in talks to have a Reality Show of his own.
• Country music singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry has not recorded new music in the studio since 1977 and has not made any public appearances since 1982. The media can't even track down where she lives, with some sources saying Nashville and others saying Los Angeles.
• The Swedish metal band Ghost wears robes, hoods, and masks on stage, and refers to its singer as "Papa Emeritus" and the other members as "Nameless Ghouls" (to the point of them signing merchandise simply as "A Nameless Ghoul"). They refuse to comment on any speculation about their real identities and even faked a singer switch to try to throw off speculation about the singer's identity. This later became moot when old members revealed themselves to be a part of Ghost (Martin Persneri personally confirmed himself one of the Nameless Ghouls), and a lawsuit came out that outed a majority of past members, who then also outed the identity of Papa Emeritus as Repugnant vocalist Tobias Forge.
  • Also, one member revealed that Dave Grohl has performed with the band as a Nameless Ghoul.
• Bossa Nova legend João Gilberto became one towards the end of his life, as his declining mental state and increasing debts resulted in him cutting off contact with the outside world. In 2017, he was evicted from his apartment for not paying rent and lived with his daughter Bebe until his death in 2019.
• Selena Gomez's activity on social media has waxed and waned over the years. Back in the late 2000s, she was very active but as she left Disney Channel became less so. She completely withdrew from the public eye for a few years in the early to mid-2010s when she was dating Justin Bieber due to harassment and some unspecified personal problems, including checking into a rehab center in 2014. The following year she announced that the reason she'd gone into a treatment facility was that she had lupus and needed chemotherapy. She spent most of 2016 again in treatment before she received a kidney transplant from a friend. After recovering from a transplant, she returned to social media but isn't as active there as she was back in her teen star days.
• While less extreme than the previous examples, Jeff Hanneman of Slayer was always The Quiet One; while the rest of the band would always take time to hang out and party with fans, Jeff would usually depart to the bus to read, and interviews were rare. Outside of recording and playing shows, Hanneman seldom saw his bandmates and usually preferred to stay at home and spend time with his wife. While lead guitarist Kerry King was criticized for referring to Hanneman as a good friend despite having not seen him for several months prior to his death, the truth was that even his best friends rarely saw or spoke to him, and going several months without any real contact with him was completely normal and expected.
• Lauryn Hill, critically acclaimed alternative rapper whose sole studio album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill remains among the greatest post-Tupac hip hop albums of all time. Her career-shattering mental breakdown pre-dated that of Britney Spears and Mariah Carey. Currently, she is the mother of six children by one of Bob Marley's sons but still remains out of the public eye. In fact, nobody even knows where she lives. She does perform occasionally in concerts but is notorious for being late (an egregious example being a 2010 concert that started at 8:30 and she didn't show up until midnight) and performing poorly. She popped up again in the tabloids in mid-2013 after being sentenced to 3 months in prison for tax evasion - her excuse was that the IRS had not been respecting her family's privacy.
• Catherine St. Onge a.k.a. Himeka is known for singing several anime and video game theme songs after she had won the Second Annual Animax Anison Grand Prix in Japan. However, in 2014, she went back to Canada due to visa issues and being dropped by her label. While she does desire to continue her singing career, she reveals frustrations on Twitter about the mistreatment she experienced in the music industry and the death threats she received due to being a foreigner. Afterward, she deleted all of her social media accounts. Nothing's been heard of her ever since.
• Mark Hollis of Talk Talk was a famous example, mainly due to the fact he himself invoked the trope. After the critical success of both of Talk Talk's final works (Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, which are considered the Trope Codifier of Post-Rock), Hollis quietly retired from the music industry. While he did release a self-titled solo album afterwards, he again quietly retired to raise his family, and not much had been known where he was. The last anybody fully saw Hollis was in 2004 to pick up a Pop Award for "It's My Life", and even then he picked it up in the offices instead of the actual award show. He became a mystique figure within the music world, and with the exception of him doing a commissioned piece for the show Boss in 2012, he was never heard from again until his death at age 64 in 2019.
• Gustav Holst was totally unprepared for the fame that came to him after the huge success of The Planets. He had always been shy and turned down most social engagements in favor of teaching and more composing. It didn't help that much of his music was idiosyncratic and personal, and he grew tired of repeatedly having to explain himself.

Artists J-Q

• Michael Jackson, once he was a mega-selling solo act. It became a well-crafted part of his mystique, and when he became more available in The '90s, culminating in the Oprah Winfrey interview in early 1993, it made headlines. Unfortunately, when the accusations arose that he was a molester, the reclusiveness backfired on him badly. Subsequent attempts to be more open with the public were largely failures. The 2003 documentary Living with Michael Jackson was intended to Win Back the Crowd (Martin Bashir was then most famous for a 1995 interview with Princess Diana that curried public sympathy for her), but he freely admitted in it that he still had slumber parties with children who weren't his, not realizing how badly this would be taken by the filmmakers and most of the world. It affected his career more, and would not regain any respect until he actually died in 2009 and Posthumous Popularity Potential came into effect.
• The mercurial Los Angeles singer-songwriter and anti-war activist Bobby Jameson was one of the most infamous What Could Have Been stories of 60's rock music, and after he retired from music all together in 1985 he was so hard to track down that many of his friends assumed he had died. Originally starting his career in 1963, he was hyped as the "next big thing" thanks to a publicity blitz by his manager (future real life Sinister Minister Tony Alamo), but never managed to get any success on the pop charts (except in Canada). After a brief attempt at restarting his career in England, he recorded his most famous album Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest...which was released under the pseudonym "Chris Lucey" due to contractual obligations with the record company. ^note  Long story short, the album was supposed to have been recorded by a singer named Chris Ducey, and they had already printed sleeves for the record with all the tracks. But Ducey already had been contracted to another label and they couldn't release any of the songs he recorded, so Jameson had to write new songs to match the titles for the songs! While he started recording under his real name soon after and kept getting record deals thanks to his friendship with Frank Zappa, none of his music was successful on its own terms, and he infamously turned down a role as one of The Monkees. He did, however, get his name known...as an anti-war protestor and general rabble-rouser in Hollywood, getting him the sobriquet of "the mayor of the Sunset Strip". By 1972, a Rolling Stone article about his business deals with Tony Alamo called him "a has been without ever having been", and noted that a suicide attempt he made that year was "the first publicity he received in years". As mentioned above, he retired in 1985 to deal with his drug addiction and mental illnesses, and he had lost contact with most of his friends in Hollywood. Many of the people who knew him at the time assumed he was another drug casualty of the 60's, and he gradually faded into obscurity...and then Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest was re-released on CD in 2003, having been Vindicated by History as a forgotten classic of the psychedelic era, leading to renewed interest in his life and current whereabouts. A private detective tracked him to San Luis Obispo, California, and he suddenly re-emerged into the public eye in order to set the record straight about his career, starting a blog and YouTube channel about his career and his attempts to finally get royalties for his music. By the time of his death in 2015, he was regarded as both the last great undiscovered gem of the 60's and as an artist who was almost, but not quite, a star.
• Jandek. No one even knows for sure what his real name is. He didn't even begin performing live until well over twenty-five years after he started his musical career. His name might be Sterling R. Smith, if he's the one signing the checks for Coorwood Industries, which releases nothing but his music.
• Australian singer Emily Janes attempted to start a major music career in the early '10s. However, even at the time, she had no social media accounts and only ever gave one interview, and had only uploaded two songs to YouTube. The most information the public could get was through her now-defunct official website, but there wasn't a whole lot of information on there either.
• Zig-zagged a bit with Billy Joel. While he often appears in the public eye, mainly to promote reissues/repackagings of his back catalog, appear in Q&A seminars about his music, or perform live (with or without Elton John), and he has performed in many high-profile charity shows, most notably the Hurricane Sandy benefits, he has a considerably lower profile than he had for 30 years and has rarely released material, especially in the pop vein since 1993's River Of Dreams album. Most of the new music he has released has been instrumental contemporary classical piano music - and it's not even him performing on the albums. In 2024 he released "Turn the Lights Back On", his first new pop song since River came out.
• Almost nothing is known about the life of blues musician Robert Johnson. He released only a pithy few records in his time, none of which gained any major recognition until decades after he died in 1938. What's more, although the people that he knew remembered him fondly, he was also quite reserved and shy (legend has it that he recorded his songs while facing a wall), so we have absolutely no words that came from his mouth, and only two positively-confirmed photographs (a possible third was discovered in 2005 and confirmed by one expert in 2013, but whether or not it's truly him in the photo remains hotly contested). We don't even know where he was buried—there are three different markers in completely different locations that bear his name, all of which weren't put up until the '90s!
• Ronald Jones, former guitarist of The Flaming Lips, left the band due to his increasing agoraphobia and his distaste of Steven Drozd's heroin usage. Aside from working at a few local gigs, he practically fell off the face of the earth after leaving.
• Two examples from KISS:
  • Ace Frehley's replacement Vinnie Vincent was not seen publicly from 1996 until January 2018. He returned to the public eye at the Atlanta KISS Expo (brought on by months of gentle prodding from a major fan, through Vincent's lawyer), and explained that his 22-year absence was a combination of his lengthy lawsuit against his former band, an abysmal marriage to his now-deceased second wife, a disdain for social media, and a general feeling that no one cared about him anymore. Needless to say, he was wrong on that last part, as he got a warm reception, and even had fans fly in from all over the world to see and meet him (including one fan from Australia who had the autograph of every member of KISS except for his).
  • Vincent's own replacement, Mark St. John, basically disappeared from the music industry after a collaboration with former drummer Peter Criss ended up failing miserably. He wasn't completely gone like Vincent, but never did anything with any kind of profile again, and even spent time in jail prior to his death.
• Masaki Haruna a.k.a. Klaha is known to be the third vocalist for the Visual Kei band, Malice Mizer, following the departure of GACKT. After a year in the band, he ventured into his solo career but his releases and performance stopped without warning. While he did promise that he would return in 2007, nothing has been heard ever since his sudden departure from the music industry. When Malice Mizer's guitarist Mana tried to contact him for the band's 25th-anniversary concert in 2018, no response was received from him.
• The Knife were notoriously shy in the early stages of their career, preferring to use masks to hide their faces in photos and rarely granted interviews. They've maintained that they were willing to talk to the press, just not the ones that want to delve into their personal lives, which limited the amount they did. When Karin started promoting her own music as Fever Ray, she was much more amiable to interviews, albeit still refusing personal information and appearing covered in heavy makeup, largely to maintain her privacy.
  • Averted with the release of her album Plunge during which she used 'comparatively' little makeup/masks to hide herself. And even talked about her family in interviews.
• The founding members of Kraftwerk are notorious for this, staying holed up in their studio in Düsseldorf for days on end. Various anecdotes of their reclusiveness have been circulating for years, such as the fact that they will only answer phone calls when the precise hour, minute, and second is arranged beforehand — at which time they will answer immediately.
  • In one famous instance, before Coldplay released the song "Talk", which used the riff of "Computer Love", Chris Martin had to send a letter through the lawyers of Kraftwerk's respective parties to seek permission to use the riff. Several weeks later, he received a letter back from the band — which consisted of a sheet of paper that just said "yes".
• Satirist Tom Lehrer gave up his music career after producing only three (or so) albums worth of material and retired to a life in academia. Not as extreme as some cases, as he's apparently willing enough to be interviewed, if only to cheerfully confirm that he's still alive.
• Songwriter Dennis Linde, best known for Elvis Presley's "Burning Love" and the Dixie Chicks' "Goodbye Earl", was a known recluse. He never attended awards shows, even when he won, and rarely gave interviews.
• Pianist Mike Lombardo used to post his songs on YouTube frequently and even had a chance to sign with a record label, but his career came to an end after he was convicted in 2012 for possessing child porn. Despite his release in 2018, he's completely vanished from the public eye since one of his parole requirements involves having next to no access to the internet.
• Humphrey Lyttelton, the jazz trumpeter and chairman of the radio panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, was notoriously private. He lived in a house with no windows visible from the outside (the only exterior windows faced an internal courtyard). He hated the telephone and used it as little as possible, communicating mostly by letter (he was a keen calligrapher); he kept his phone number ex-directory and changed it if anyone discovered it. (Though this wasn't out of misanthropy — everyone who worked with him said he was a lovely man.)
• Death Grips' MC Ride rarely grants interviews and is notoriously shy, despite his aggressive and bombastic stage presence.
• MF Doom was not seen without his mask since the '90s. We knew his name was Daniel Dumile from his years as Zev-Love X, but that's about all. When he passed away on October 31, 2020, it wasn't revealed until two months later.
• 'Bamboo Manalac, the Filipino singer-songwriter and former vocalist of Rivermaya and Bamboo, is very private about his personal life that he refuses to talk about it in interviews. When he left Rivermaya in 1998, he completely disappeared from the limelight when he went to the United States for 5 years until it was revealed that he went back to school in San Franciso and Los Angeles and took up English, Film, and Philosophy as his majors. He went to the Philippines in 2002 to form his band, Bamboo, until it was disbanded. By then, Bamboo pursued his solo career but remained private about his family life.
• Jeff Mangum, singer/songwriter for the legendary indie rock band Neutral Milk Hotel, suffered a breakdown as a result of the stress of touring. He stayed out of the limelight until 2008 when sudden concerts were performed.
• Dean Martin for all intents and purposes, became this following the tragic death of his son, Dean Paul Martin, who was killed in a plane crash during a California Air National Guard training mission in 1987, at the age of 35. In 1988, he bowed out of a Rat Pack reunion tour after only a short time on the job. He also declined to take part in a 1992 retrospective on Martin and Jerry Lewis with his old comedy partner. When he died on Christmas Day in 1995, Martin had long been out of the public eye.
• Max Martin is pretty much the most influential pop music producer and songwriter in the world as he's written and produced more number-one hit singles than any other producer in the world, second to only George Martin and Lennon/McCartney's songwriting. He's also known to shun all interviews and public appearances, save for limited industry appearances, and used to make all the artists he worked with fly to Sweden if they wanted to work with him.
• Miki Matsubara, Japanese City Pop icon most known for her song "Mayonaka no Door (Stay With Me)" (especially following it going viral on the internet in The New '20s) abruptly disappeared from the spotlight in late 2000, marked by her sending a mass email to everyone she had business ties with announcing "[...] I can no longer continue with my music for a certain reason. I am cancelling my phone, cell phone, and email. So please do not reply. Please live your life without regrets." In 2001, it was discovered that she had received a late-stage cancer diagnosis and chose to abandon her career — feeling it had in some way led to her condition — spending her final years battling with her illness and quietly living with her parents until she passed away in 2004.
• Lee Mavers, leader of The La's, has something of a Berserk Button about this. He is often treated as a Reclusive Artist because of the band's failure to produce a second studio album for over thirty years, and the rarity of their live performances. However, he insists that he has a perfectly normal social life, and complains that the media describe him as a "recluse" just because he doesn't get photographed falling over outside fashionable nightclubs with a model on each arm.
• Bridgit Mendler is this. Her social media accounts appear to be managed by her Public Relations team and little is really known about her personal life, even who she's dating (not that she has confirmed or denied it). Her VEVO channel on YouTube is about the only "true" social media she has.
• George Michael became a recluse in his last months, after checking out of rehab, to the point that the last photos taken prior to his death in December 2016 showed him suddenly gaining weight along with rarely showing up in public in addition to battling his demons which caused his relationship with his cousin to end up being strained.
• Mexican singer Luis Miguel is infamous for being very aloof, continuously refusing to talk about anything related to his off-stage life and keeping to himself in almost everything.
• Italian singer Mina stopped performing music and making public appearances in 1978, but it hasn't stopped her from recording new music on a yearly basis in addition to writing a weekly forum on the front page of La Stampa and a page in the Italian edition of the magazine Vanity Fair, where she answers fan letters.
• Irish musician and singer-songwriter Van Morrison is still not comfortable with interviews and fandom, even as he approaches his fiftieth year in the business. Viewed as a curmudgeonly old misanthrope who has not improved with age, he has variably engaged in a rolling-in-the-gutter fight with one manager, in the presence of a visibly embarrassed BBC radio team there to try and interview him; described his fans as a bunch of ignorant worthless dolts (this backstage, where he initially refused to go at all in front of a paying public who had bought the gig tickets in good faith) and given a succession of irritated interviewers stubbornly monosyllabic answers. In fact, one of the earliest interviews with a very young Morrison is preserved to this day by Ulster Television and is gleefully brought out for blooper reels. A very young interviewer called Gloria Hunniford (who later went on to a stellar career as a TV presenter and hostess of interview format shows) is seen to gush profusely at being in the presence of Belfast's answer to Mick Jagger, and to enthuse about the broodingly handsome writer and performer of groovy music (this was in 1964 when Morrison was a startlingly good-looking young man). But after that build-up, could Gloria get a word out of him other than "yes" or "no"? She cannot, but this does not stop her from trying, so she does, for at least five excruciating minutes. The look of Oh, Crap! in her eyes is unmistakable and very obvious. Morrison has not improved with age.
  • In his earliest "interview", a journalist turned up at the studio where the then largely unknown Morrison was recording. He had an appointment, which had been timed to a break in the recording work. Having waited around for a time, watching him reading a newspaper, the journalist approached and asked if they could do the interview now. Morrison's reply: "Can't you see I'm busy?!"
  • In light of his 70th birthday, he finally consented to an in-depth interview with The Irish Times, in which the interviewer remarks that Morrison was quite pleasant and forthcoming during the interview, albeit just very blunt.
  • He recently appeared in a mini-documentary by Lenny Henry passionately discussing the blues, so it seems that he consents to appearances and interviews only if he's interested in the topic.
• J-Rock and Anisong artist Nano used to be this way early in her career. No one knew of her identity when she got her start doing vocaloid covers on YouTube and Nico Nico Douga, and though she began doing live performances after getting signed, her management deliberately decided to keep her out of the public eye. In recent years, however, this has begun to change, as she's more active on social media, made podcast appearances, and starting her own YouTube channel with the express purpose of providing an authentic behind-the-scenes perspective.
• Perhaps the ultimate example of this is Canadian musician Nash the Slash, former member of the progressive rock band FM (he also has a vast and eclectic oeuvre as a solo artist); since the late '70s, he has never appeared in public without a thick layer of bandages covering every bit of skin that isn't absolutely necessary for him to perform, and he has done his best to keep his true identity a mystery, at which he mostly succeeded until his real name showed up on Wikipedia.
• The members of the obscure American-British girl group No Secrets have all but vanished from existence. Reportedly, Angel Faith is a doctor, Carly Lewis is married, Erin Tanner (now Nicki Foxx) is a solo artist, Jessica Fried (now Jessi Malay) is a solo artist as well, and Jade Ryusaki now resides in Hawaii as a model. Good luck trying to track them down!
• Musician Nyango Star — a promotional character for a Japanese strawberry farm who plays heavy metal drums. The identity of the musician who plays Nyango is not even public knowledge.
• Oasis:
  • Original bassist Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan, who left the group in 1999, along with original rhythm guitarist Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs. According to Noel Gallagher, Guigsy quit via fax and avoided phone calls from the Gallaghers in the following weeks. He declined to appear in the 2004 Definitely Maybe DVD, though a polite letter explaining his reasons for doing so appears as a hidden extra, along with a short segment with pundits giving their views on him. He also declined to be interviewed for the Oasis: Supersonic documentary, though archive footage of him was used instead.
  • Second drummer Alan White (not to be confused with the late Yes drummer) quit music entirely after leaving the band, outside of a one-off gig with his brother Steve's band in 2008. Little has been heard from him since.
• Frank Ocean burst onto the music scene with his association with OFWGKTA in 2008 and his own solo albums. But instead of capitalizing on the buzz of his critically acclaimed debut album channel ORANGE, he virtually disappeared and while he announced his intention to release his next album, Boys Don't Cry, he dropped off the radar again with no album in sight and people hungrily waiting for it. Even Adele, who herself is somewhat notorious for her long wait times between albums, complained that she was impatient for his album. In August 2016, he finally delivered not one, but two albums: a visual album called Endless, and his long-awaited Boys Don't Cry, now re-titled Blonde with the original title reworked as a companion zine. He has been somewhat active on social media, posting the usual Instagram post or Tumblr update every few months, and has been putting out singles as of late 2019, although his activity stopped after the sudden death of his younger brother Ryan in August 2020.
• Per "Dead" Ohlin, vocalist of Mayhem, was known to be extremely reclusive and antisocial, to the point where even his own bandmates knew almost nothing about him until after his suicide.
• Experimental electronic/R&B artist Jai Paul is notorious for this, such as only having a Twitter account with one tweet to address a leaked album back in 2013, giving very few interviews and very few live performances, next-to-nothing being known about his personal life, and most notoriously, only having released two or three singles since 2010 despite massive praise and buzz (aforementioned leaked album/demos not counting).
• Prince rarely granted interviews, mostly because of his reported Jerkass tendencies.
• Queen:
  • In spite of his larger-than-life stage presence, Freddie Mercury was somewhat more introverted when he wasn't performing. Combined with an aversion to interacting with the media (a result of experiences in Queen's very early career when they were regularly slated in the music press), he stayed out of the public eye when he could. When he contracted AIDS, this tendency increased due to his desire to avoid people pitying him, to the point where he only revealed that he was sick one day before bronchio-pneumonia brought on by the disease killed him.
  • John Deacon was always notoriously shy but almost completely withdrew from public life in the years after Mercury's death and gave Brian May and Roger Taylor permission to continue performing and releasing material as Queen without him. He does, however, continue to look after the band's finances and May and Taylor regularly consult with him.

Artists R-Z

• Retro Jazz/blues musician & singer Leon Redbone was very secretive about his past and rarely gave interviews; when he did talk about his history, everything he said could be filed under Multiple-Choice Past or Blatant Lies.
  "I don't do anything mysterious on purpose. I'm less than forthcoming, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm mysterious. It just means I'm not inclined to go there."
• The experimental rock group The Residents. In all photos and public appearances, they're in some kind of disguise, usually their trademark eyeball masks. They also refuse to be interviewed by the press, adding to their reclusive nature. However, it's very widely suspected that they are actually the same people as their "management team" the Cryptic Corporation, who do interact with the media. Cryptic Corporation co-founder Hardy Fox finally outed himself as a Resident in 2017, and it was universally noted in media reports of his death a year later.
• Axl Rose, after the original Guns N' Roses breakup, made no public appearances (outside of concerts with the new band lineup, including appearances at several music festivals and closing the VMAs in 2002) for seven years and granted almost no interviews during the making of Chinese Democracy (which took at least nine years to record and release).
• fun. frontman Nate Ruess has retired from the public eye apart from his locked Twitter account and niche podcast with two Twitter friends.
• One of Cannibal Corpse's two original guitarists, Bob Rusay, left music entirely after he got kicked out of the band, and went on to become a golf instructor. He was the only member who couldn't be reached for an interview in the Centuries of Torment: The First 20 Years video album made for the band's 20th anniversary.
• Swedish indie-synthpop/dreampop artist Sally Shapiro has not revealed her real name, nor performed live or toured other than a short DJ tour in 2008, and rarely gives interviews.
• Since 2014, Sia has avoided the spotlight and is not contractually obliged to tour or promote her music; she doesn't even show her face most of the time. This is because she grew highly uncomfortable with fame and it damaged her health. Additionally, her social media pages used to be run by her team. In 2023, she revealed that she is autistic, which could explain her reclusiveness and discomfort with fame.
• SOPHIE spent much of her initial boom of popularity starting around 2013 a recluse, producing mononymously-released music backed by anonymously credited singers and often devoid of anything regarding her identity — one infamous 2014 Boiler Room liveset saw her hire a drag performer to pretend to DJ on stage while she stood nearby as a security guard. This ended up changing a bit in late 2017 after she came out as a transgender woman and began more publicly exploring her personal image, showing up to actual live performances, putting her face in videos and promotional material, and being more willing to give interviews, but she still counts as she generally strayed away from social media and overall remained a private person up until her death in 2021.
• Phil Spector not only didn't talk to the press but kept his ex-wife Ronnie Spector prisoner in his mansion to prevent her from being photographed (or seen in a bikini by others). He died in 2021 while serving a jail sentence for murder.
• Layne Staley of Alice in Chains cut himself off from friends, family, and bandmates for the last three years of his life. His body wasn't discovered until two weeks after his fatal overdose in April 2002. The Rocket, a Seattle music magazine, already had his obituary written from a few years earlier. Even before his seclusion, guitarist Jerry Cantrell (one of Staley's best friends) stated that not hearing from Staley for months at a time was not out of the ordinary.
• Sly Stone, like the Layne Staley example above, stopped his music career to pretty much spend his time doing drugs. He stopped granting interviews in 1987 and only makes sporadic concert appearances (where he has sometimes left the stage after only performing for 15 minutes). Rumors abound that he's living out of his car now.
• Jack Stauber is very private when it comes to discussing his personal life, and dropped off the face of the internet in 2021 after posting a song about a terminally ill baby, with nobody knowing why he left, or when (or if) he'll ever return.
• George Strait is known for keeping a fairly quiet personal life, rarely disclosing any information about himself that isn't already publicly known or drawing attention to himself as a celebrity.
• Andy Sturmer, the Lead Drummer and co-songwriter of Jellyfish, has remained out of the (relative) spotlight since the band's 1994 breakup, producing and writing for J-Pop band Puffy AmiYumi, providing backing vocals for The Black Crowes and Rooney, as well as producing music for cartoon shows like Teen Titans, Fish Hooks and Kick Buttowski. He grants few (or no) interviews and has a far lower online profile than keyboardist and co-songwriter Roger Manning (or nearly anyone else in the group).
• Following her 1989 World Tour, Taylor Swift took a deliberately long break from recording, writing, and touring, releasing very few songs in 2015-2016 apart from a duet with Zayn Malik for Fifty Shades Darker ("I Don't Wanna Live Forever") and a co-write for a Little Big Town single, "Better Man" (arguably Taylor's first foray into country music since Red) and uncredited co-write with her then-boyfriend, Calvin Harris ("This Is What You Came For"), along with various controversies and breakups in her personal life. In the summer of 2017, she erased every post on social media and unfollowed everyone she previously followed (save for Tumblr), and posted three cryptic videos showing the tail, body, and head of a snake. In late August, she finally announced the November release of her sixth album in August, reputation, along with releasing the lead single and its video, "Look What You Made Me Do", later in the month. This phase ended after the release of the album itself.
• Former Japan frontman David Sylvian is notorious for his hermitlike lifestyle, especially after his move to America and divorce from Ingrid Chavez, only occasionally resurfacing for the rare interview or announcement. His Twitter account constantly cycles in and out of various states of accessibility, and in one interview he admitted that he has a hard time going grocery shopping.
• Sentenced's lead guitarist Miika Tenkula, despite being the leading songwriter, stayed very much out of the spotlight with rhythm guitarist Sami Lopakka and vocalist Ville Laihiala handling most of the publicist. During his entire lifetime Miika only gave a couple of interviews, didn't have an email address and didn't even own a computer. When a biography of him was published in 2024 it consisted pretty much entirely of accounts of his friends, coworkers and family members.
• Mexican singer-songwriter Lynda Thomas became this in 2002, when she vanished from the public eye, leaving some people to speculate about why she did such a thing during the peak of her career, with battling bulimia, depression, and social isolation (which she mentioned on her song "A 1000 X Hora") being a possible reason. Fortunately, sixteen years later, Thomas returned to the public eye by launching her Twitter account, with her first post explaining her absence along with revealing that she's now a mother of one and has since made a comeback.
• Glitch-hop/dubstep producer Tristam is notorious for having extremely little information shared with the public. Images and videos of him are very rare (none of which are recent), prefers to keep his true name and identity secret, and shares only vague and occasional updates on social media.
• Shania Twain became this after her Up! album in 2002. It turned out this was because she lost her voice due to Lyme disease and dysphonia. After undergoing therapy, she regained it and reemerged with a hugely successful Las Vegas residency.
• After spending the 1960s and 1970s as a teen idol in the UK, Scott Walker shifted to experimental music for the remainder of his career. He only resurfaced for interviews when he had an album to promote, and virtually disappeared in the time between them. He even worked as an interior decorator in the downtime; he was that low-key.
• Lou Watts of Chumbawamba vanished off the face of the Earth after the band's 2012 breakup. She has no social media profiles and hasn't done anything since the band's breakup.
• The Weeknd has confessed that his initial refusal to disclose his identity when he released his first mixtape was because he was camera-shy and not used to the attention. Since then, he's still uncomfortable with the spotlight but has gradually gotten better at coping with it.
• Meg White of The White Stripes hasn't been seen in public since the band's final performance in 2009 on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Even when the band's nomination for the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame was announced in 2023, she continued to refuse interview requests, even as written correspondence only. The general suspicion is that her natural dislike of the limelight was worsened by the sometimes misogynistic trolling she received during the band's career from people who disliked her drumming style.
• Nigerian-born music producer Patrice "Pato" Wilson is perhaps most infamous as the producer (and out of nowhere guest rapper) of Rebecca Black's "Friday", but he produced other artists through his infamous vanity studios ARK Music Factory and Pato World Music. His company was famous for producing songs and music videos for anyone who paid a fee, mostly parents of wealthy families whose children wanted to be teen idols, leading to accusations that he was swindling families out of their money or even worse. Ever since a bizarre feud with h3h3productions in 2018 (where he produced a diss track aimed at the comedy channel), he has seemingly kept a low profile, and has not produced a new song since.

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