History Main / KayfabeMusic

* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] and {{Lampshaded}} by Music/PinkFloyd in ''Music/TheWall'' in "In the Flesh". Ironically, it's a BookEnd to the song "In the Flesh?" where backup or guest musicians usually take the place of Pink Floyd wearing Pink Floyd masks.

* In Music/{{Versailles}}, the band members were vampiric immortal aristocrats from the Romantic era.
* The band [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k9UveuX1Po Rolandz]] has developed a quite solid discography and even been on tour. Its singer, Roland, is a character from a comedy movie. The real singer is the same actor who played Roland in that movie.
* Music/{{ManoWar}} consists of really manly men, fantasy heroes who are always ready to kill anyone. With STEEL, of course.
* Music/{{Lordi}} are [[PeopleInRubberSuits monsters]]... who have sued to bury images of them out of costume.

* Markoolio plays this on [[MultilayerFacade two levels]]. His first persona is this cool playboy, gangster, warrior, expert soccer strategist, and so on. However, this facade breaks all the time, especially since his own chorus are disloyal to him and frequently rat him out to the audience - exposing him as the total failure and SmallNameBigEgo that he really is. Of course, this "real person, under the mask" is just as fabricated as the first level.
* At the live ''Music/{{Vocaloid}}'' concerts, the band is real enough, but the lead "singer" is a projected image (and not really a singer at all).
* The ''VideoGame/ProjectSekai'' ''Colorful Live'' - 1st Link - concert has projections of the games original cast of characters and Virtual Singers (formerly called Vocaloids) performing in front of a real band.
* Music/TheWhiteStripes' Jack and Meg maintained that they were brother and sister long after it was public knowledge that they were actually AmicableExes. Jack said it originally started so that people wouldn't constantly focus on their relationship over the music, and presumably they just maintained it as part of the band's identity.
* Music/LadyGaga went to her little sister's graduation in [[ImpossiblyCoolClothes full Gaga regalia]]. She later said that she considers her entire life to be part of her 'character'.
* Members of the German band Coppelius usually play their XIX-century aristocratic personas in public.
* Music/{{Devo}} has gone through a few permutations of this; it's essentially them, except with sci-fi bases, an idiot manager that doesn't understand them, a giant baby (Booji), and their...uh...leader, General Boy. They always did claim to be a corporation, which got a lot funnier in the mid-90's when they reformed as a soundtrack company. And then there's bass player Jerry Casale's side-album as Jihad Jerry, essentially Creator/StephenColbert as a Muslim blues musician.
* Music/TheResidents are never seen in public without their trademark eyeball masks. There's a general assumption that the four "managers" that appear with them and speak on their behalf are at least partially composed of the actual members of the band.
* Music/{{Gorillaz}} are a BandToon in the real world, which means that their members are a group of four cartoon characters.
* Music/{{Buckethead}} is the persona of Brian Patrick Carroll, who is so socially awkward that he invented the character to hide his face and distance himself from his audience. People who know him, however, say that his behavior "in character" is basically just him being himself.
** Cornbugs was a Buckethead side project that also featured actor Creator/BillMoseley, who performed in-character as Chop Top, the deranged murderer he played in ''Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacre2''. Possibly for copyright reasons, Bill is officially credited as Bill "Choptop" Moseley on all their recordings.
* ''Series/HannahMontana'' is a Disney Channel show about a girl named Miley Stewart who lives a double life as TeenIdol Hannah Montana, and Music/MileyCyrus has actually gone on tour as the Hannah Montana character.
* IndustrialMetal artist Music/{{Mortiis}}, for a long time, was never seen without his troll mask on, with its pointed nose and big ears. In 2005 for his album ''The Grudge'' his mask took on a more artificial appearance, looking like it had been stitched and stapled to his face. After that, however, he finally removed the mask. And then brought it back a few years later due to popular demand.

* {{Death|Metal}}{{grind|Core}} band Brujeria is ostensibly made up of Mexican drug lords who always perform in masks to hide their identities from the FBI. On top of that, a large chunk of their members over the years actually are either from Mexico or of Hispanic descent. However, most of their members past and present are already well-known from other acts.
* The electro-industrial project Zombie Girl has singer Renee Cooper as the eponymous zombie, always appearing in corpse make-up and claiming to be undead in her lyrics.

* Music/TheAquabats are a ska band made up of super heroes. Their mythos is expanded upon in [[Series/TheAquabatsSuperShow their TV show]].
* The County Medical Examiners are two Music/{{Carcass}}-loving physicians joined by a much older, avant-garde physician who play DeathMetal based on what they see in their field. After years of mystery, it was implied in 2012 that the whole band was simply a side-project of musician Matt Widener (ex-Exhumed/Cretin).
* Har Mar Superstar is Harold Martin Tillmann, the [[IntercourseWithYou frequently sex-obsessed]] soul-singer twin brother of indie pop singer-songwriter Sean Tillmann (aka Sean Na Na). Of course, Har Mar ''is'' Sean Tillmann, the stage name really stems from a shopping center in Minnesota called the Har Mar Mall, and he really only kept up the twin charade for a short period of his career. Tillmann continues to put out solo albums as both Sean Na Na and Har Mar Superstar, and he still takes on a somewhat more flamboyant persona when performing as the latter.

* Music/AbneyPark is a group of SteamPunk {{Sky Pirate}}s.
* Music/UnknownHinson is just the onstage persona of Stuart D. Baker, but is presented as if he's a real individual.

* Music/AliceCooper was originally the name of the band as a whole, but frontman Vincent Damon Furnier eventually turned it into a fictional, psychopathic character. Behind the scenes, Furnier is, at least in modern times, mild, straight-laced and conservative.
* The thrash metal band Music/{{Ghoul}} perform as a group of mutant, cannibalistic ghouls from an over-the-top {{Uberwald}} land called Creepsylvania. They keep their identities a secret and always wear bags on their heads when performing live.
* Japanese rock band Kishidan, who model themselves after the 80s-era "yankee" punk look complete with pompadours, is fronted by vocalist Show Ayanocozey. Meanwhile, a similar looking man in a blonde afro is the flamboyant J-pop rapper DJ OZMA, who later "retired" to produce the Japanese-American trio Yazima Beauty Salon, one of whom is the "16-year-old" Naomi Yazima. The open secret that all three are the same person was a big joke when all three were technically recording music. During a television program, Naomi asked for another musician's autograph and to have it made out to "Naomi Show Ozma". The Show Ayanocozey and DJ OZMA personas were even made to have a faux-rivalry between them, and they had a shared concert where they even performed on stage together (with DJ OZMA played by a member of the OZMA entourage who was to "inherit" the band in another publicity stunt), and at a later time DJ OZMA performed with the other two members of Yazima Beauty Salon as OZMA rather than Naomi. He kept the ruse up until he appeared on a talk show in 2013 and admitted (as Show) that he and OZMA were "the same character".
** Yazima Beauty Salon is just Show Ayanocozey/DJ OZMA and Japanese comic duo the Tunnels Noritake Kinashi and Takaaki Ishibashi in drag, with Kinashi as the matriarch Margaret Yazima, Ayanocozey/OZMA as the eldest daughter Naomi, and the six-foot tall Ishibashi portraying the 12-year-old Strawberry.

* The DeathMetal band Music/{{Portal}} (no relation to the video game) have never performed in public without their costumes, and three of the band members' real names [[AnonymousBand aren't even known to the public]] (two of them are known to be Brad Loong and Kevin Kevinson from Impetuous Ritual and Grave Upheaval though).
* Swedish rock band [[Music/GhostBand Ghost]] consists of a rotating masked band and frontman Tobias Forge in costume as one of several characters, currently Papa Emeritus IV, formerly known as Cardinal Copia. The band has a fairly elaborate backstory which they continue to build upon to explain the progression from the various Papa Emeritus characters to Copia.
* Country singer Music/OrvillePeck is another example of this, as he always appears in public wearing a mask.
* Japanese VisualKei band Music/PsychoLeCemu is basically a {{Cosplay}} band that plays as if they were an anime/video game/tokusatsu FiveManBand ripped directly from the source into live-action version, as seen in their many music videos and in some of their concerts, where even they make live-action {{RPG}}.

* Music/{{Eminem}} has a triune of personas he uses in his music - '''Eminem''', a cocky rapper and eternal student of hip-hop who tends to act as the narrator for the other personas; '''Marshall''', a loving father and screwup with a DarkAndTroubledPast who expresses the real thoughts and emotions of the rapper; and '''Slim Shady''', a HeroicComedicSociopath AntiRoleModel SerialKiller who survived a HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood, will kill you for no reason, and [[MediumAwareness knows he is fictional]]. As Eminem puts it, his songs come from Marshall's mind, are written and performed by Eminem, and star Slim Shady. Unlike many of these examples, these personas tend to have a very blurry line between them, and he'll often switch between them within a song, have them argue between themselves as separate characters, or allow one persona to falsely represent himself as one of the other ones.
** While Eminem was still an underground rapper, Slim Shady was treated as [[AlterEgoActing a more separate person]]. Em would play Slim clutching a bottle of vodka on stage, which he would constantly swig from as the show went on, and would maintain Slim's CreepyHighPitchedVoice and exaggerated Detroit projects accent while talking to the crowd between songs. He toned this down once he got famous.
** In ''Relapse'', the concept is that Eminem has relapsed, taking up drugs again after trying to get clean, [[JekyllAndHyde transforming him into the murderous Slim Shady]]. In reality, he had been clean for a year at the time he made the album. Some songs on the album gently play with this discrepancy, particularly "Must Be The Ganja", in which Slim claims the reason he's high and murderous has to be the weed or the drink... only to eventually admit he's clean, so he has no excuse.
* [[Music/FrankZappa The Mothers of Invention]]'s album ''Music/CruisingWithRubenAndTheJets'' has them posing as the titular fake doo-wop band, Ruben and the Jets.
* [[Music/{{Gwar}} GWAR]] is known first and foremost for their elaborate sci-fi mythos, outrageous costumes, onstage antics and spraying their audience with buckets of fake blood.
* Jennifer Murphy songs as her superheroine persona, Go Girl.

* {{Death|Metal}}{{grind|Core}} band Brujeria is ostensibly made up of Mexican drug lords who always perform in masks to hide their identities from the FBI. However, most of their members past and present are already well-known from other acts.

** In ''Relapse'', the concept is that Eminem has relapsed, taking up drugs again after trying to get clean, [[JekyllAndHyde transforming him into the murderous Slim Shady]]. In reality, [[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs he had been clean for a year at the time he made the album]]. Some songs on the album gently play with this discrepancy, particularly "Must Be The Ganja", in which Slim claims the reason he's high and murderous has to be the weed or the drink... only to eventually admit he's clean, so he has no excuse.

* The Website/YouTube channel Music/SiIvaGunner has this to a certain extent. It's a wholesale impersonation of another [=YouTuber=] that uploaded GameMusic, so no credit is given and the channel is dolled up to look like it's just some guy archiving their favorite soundtracks for fun, while in reality it's a large amount of people working behind the scenes to make remixes of those songs. However, it is downplayed: every video's description [[ReadTheFreakingManual asks the viewer to "please read the channel description"]], with said description having a disclaimer in regards to this AnonymousBand aspect (though it comes just shy of mentioning that it's a BaitAndSwitch channel). Completely averted on the Bandcamp however, where all songs are credited to the correct artist. Strangely enough, this applies InUniverse too: the channel initially had a faux-AuthorAvatar character named [=SiIvaGunner=], but he was supplanted by HostileShowTakeover from The Voice. The effect of this to the channel's mannerisms? On the "bait" side of things, pretty much nothing--the "read the channel description" part was rephrased to better fit The Voice, but that's it. The Voice was later supplanted himself by Haltmann, who again acted mostly the same with only the one line being switched. Haltmann eventually {{invoked}} kayfabe by setting up an AI to act like the original [=SiIvaGunner=]. (Also, the proper artist credits on the Bandcamp are said to be unreadable corrupted data to all characters except the one FourthWallObserver.)

* The Website/YouTube channel Music/SiIvaGunner has this to a certain extent. It's a wholesale impersonation of another [=YouTuber=] that uploaded GameMusic, so no credit is given and the channel is dolled up to look like it's just some guy archiving their favorite soundtracks for fun, while in reality it's a large amount of people working behind the scenes to make remixes of those songs. However, it is downplayed: every video's description [[ReadTheFreakingManual asks the viewer to "please read the channel description"]], with said description having a disclaimer in regards to this AnonymousBand aspect (though it comes just shy of mentioning that it's a BaitAndSwitch channel). Completely averted on the Bandcamp however, where all songs are credited to the correct artist. Strangely enough, this applies InUniverse too: the channel initially had a faux-AuthorAvatar character ''named'' [=SiIvaGunner=], but he was supplanted by HostileShowTakeover (multiple times over). The effect of this to the channel's mannerisms? Pretty much nothing, as everything continued to be run like a guy posting game music, with only the "read the channel description" part being changed to something more in-character for the new hosts. Eventually, the new hosts set up an AI meant to act like the original host, thus {{enforcing}} the kayfabe. (Also, the proper artist credits on the Bandcamp are said to be unreadable corrupted data to all characters except the one FourthWallObserver.)

* The Website/YouTube channel ''Music/SiIvaGunner'' has this to a certain extent. It's a wholesale impersonation of another [=YouTuber=] that uploaded GameMusic, so no credit is given and the channel is dolled up to look like it's just some guy archiving their favorite soundtracks for fun, while in reality it's a large amount of people working behind the scenes to make remixes of those songs. However, it is downplayed: every video's description [[ReadTheFreakingManual asks the viewer to "please read the channel description"]], with said description having a disclaimer in regards to this AnonymousBand aspect (though it comes just shy of mentioning that it's a BaitAndSwitch channel). Completely averted on the Bandcamp however, where all songs are credited to the correct artist. Strangely enough, this applies InUniverse too: the channel initially had a faux-AuthorAvator character ''named'' [=SiIvaGunner=], but he was supplanted by HostileShowTakeover (multiple times over). The effect of this to the channel's mannerisms? Pretty much nothing, as everything continued to be run like a guy posting game music, with only the "read the channel description" part being changed to something more in-character for the new hosts. Eventually, the new hosts set up an AI meant to act like the original host, thus {{enforcing}} the kayfabe. (Also, the proper artist credits on the Bandcamp are said to be unreadable corrupted data to all characters except the one FourthWallObserver.)

* The Youtube channel ''Music/SiIvaGunner'' has this to a certain extent. The 'high quality rips' are all submitted under the same person, even though in reality a large amount of people are working behind the scene to make them. In the same sense, the character [=SiIvaGunner=] is also this, with all commentary in videos (provided by a Text to Speech program) being done in-character, including when the channel gets a HostileShowTakeOver in the form of The Voice Inside Your Head, Wood Man, Inspector Gadget and President Hartmann (the channel and accompanying Twitter account switched in appearance and character during the takeover). Averted when going to the Bandcamp page however, where all rips are credited to the correct artist.

* In ''ComicStrip/{{Pondus}}'', Pondus believes that a certain rock band truly lives the creed of "Drugs, Sex & Rock'n'Roll". In one strip, the band is shown working out and eating healthy food. Suddenly their manager come in and yell at them that the journalists will be there any minute. And thus, they quickly trash themselves down to look as if they have been partying and boozing up all night. Then the scene switches to Pondus and his wife watching the television. A journalist is (or probably rather is pretending to be) surprised that the band members manage to stay healthy with this lifestyle. The singer explains this with "It's rock'n'roll", baby. It becomes a lifestyle." and Pondus tries to get his wife to accept this message as gospel.

* Music/DaftPunk's persona is of a couple of robots. They say that the reason why they do this is because takes focus off of them as artists, and puts more focus on the music, so their live performances are more like raves where the DJ isn't all that important.

* Music/{{Kraftwerk}} are robots, who became less human as time progressed. They even give interviews as their mechanical robot selves.
* Music/{{GWAR}} has a long backstory about them being aliens banished to Earth, and like Lordi are never seen out of costume.

* Stovokor is a death metal band consisting entirely of [[Franchise/StarTrek Klingons]].

* The Space Balloons claim to be lost travelers from the planet Balloonia. The concept is mainly adhered to in performances and the songs themselves, though, not interviews.

* Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Music/DavidBowie and his backing band's alien personas during the 1972 tour for the ''Ziggy Stardust'' album.

* The members of Music/SteamPoweredGiraffe perform as a group of automatons built in the Victorian era, complete with elaborate metallic stage makeup. Even their merch sellers have their own personas in the form of "Blue Matter Engineers," which they dress up as for shows.

* Servotron performed as a band of robots, whose music was meant to promote [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters robotic uprisings against humans]], as well as to encourage humans to become {{cyborg}}s.

* Canadian band The Cybertronic Spree performs as characters from ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformersTheMovie'', with Hot Rod, Arcee, Unicron, and others. They're always in character in interviews.
* Japanese VisualKei band Music/PsychoLeCemu is basically a {{Cosplay}} band that plays as if they were an anime/video game/tokusatsu FiveManBand ripped directly from the source into live-action version, as seen in their many music videos and in some of their concerts, where even they make live-action {{RPG}}.
* Music/TheMechanisms perform as a group of immortal SpacePirates, and the stores of their albums are presented as things they've seen while wandering the cosmos.

* Music/{{Buckethead}}'' is the persona of Brian Patrick Carroll, who is so socially awkward that he invented the character to hide his face and distance himself from his audience. People who know him, however, say that his behavior "in character" is basically just him being himself.

** Cornbugs was a Buckethead side project that also featured actor Bill Moseley, who performed in-character as Chop Top, the deranged murderer he played in ''Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacre2''. Possibly for copyright reasons, Bill is officially credited as Bill "Choptop" Moseley on all their recordings.

* Masked Intruder'are four ski-mask-clad criminals who formed a pop-punk band while in jail together, only differentiated from each other by the colors of their masks and shoes [[note]]in an in-character interview, it was once pointed out that, if the masks were really meant to help them evade authorities, they'd stand out less if they just all wore black masks - they claimed they needed the colored masks to tell ''each other'' apart[[/note]] . Lead vocalist Intruder Blue apparently got in trouble with the law due to his StalkerWithACrush tendencies, so a lot of their material consists of {{obsession song}}s being played for humor.

* Music/{{Devo}} has gone through a few permutations of this; it's essentially them, except with sci-fi bases, an idiot manager that doesn't understand them, a giant baby (Booji), and their...uh...leader, General Boy. They always did claim to be a corporation, which got a lot funnier in the mid-90's when they reformed as a soundtrack company. And then there's bass player Jerry Casale's side-album as Jihad Jerry, essentially Stephen Colbert as a Muslim blues musician.

* Swedish rock band {{Music/Ghost}} consists of a rotating masked band and frontman Tobias Forge in costume as one of several characters, currently the Cardinal Copia. The band has a fairly elaborate backstory which they continue to build upon to explain the progression from the various Papa Emeritus characters to Coppia.

* In Music/{{Versailles}}, the band members were vampiric immortal aristocrats from the Romantic era. A FunnyAneurysmMoment (and the ultimate breaking of the kayfabe) ensued when Jasmine You died in RealLife.

-->--'''"In the Flesh"''', ''Music/TheWall''

* Masked Intruder'are four ski-mask-clad criminals who formed a pop-punk band while in jail together, only differentiated from each other by the colors of their masks and shoes [[note]]in an in-character interview it was once pointed out that if the masks were really meant to help them evade authorities, they'd stand out less if just all wore black masks - they claimed they needed the colored masks to tell ''each other'' apart[[/note]] . Lead vocalist Intruder Blue apparently got in trouble with the law due to his StalkerWithACrush tendencies, so a lot of their material consists of {{obsession song}}s being played for humor.