It must be hard being a famous musician, because so many of them desperately want to be other people. How else do you explain the sheer volume of alternate personalities that have been invented in music over the last few decades? From David Bowie to The Beatles, even the most famous and beloved musicians get the urge to live in someone else's skin for a bit. Sometimes, as with Ziggy Stardust and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the results are a smashing success and become catalysts for future musician's to indulge in some split personality fun. With the number of musicians who take a stab at acting later in their careers, it seems a lot of alter egos are born out of frustration for having chosen the wrong profession in the first place. Or maybe they were struggling actors at one point, made the switch to music to evade a minimum wage job, and invented these bizarre characters as a way to merge the two career paths. Then again, sometimes an artist just wants to experiment with an entirely different sound and knows that it doesn't line up well with their current fan base. So it's easier to call themselves a different name, wear some different clothes, and avoid alienating the people who made them famous in the first place. Or maybe they just stopped caring at some point in their career and said, Garth Brooks is dead. I want to be known as Chris Gaines from now on. That's always a strong possibility, too.
