12 Musicians You Didn't Realise Have Truly Bizarre Alter Egos

8. Beastie Boys' Country Mike

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOWcvoDrJuw What started as a silly character in an unproduced Spike Jonze/Beastie Boys film eventually blossomed into a full album of Mike D performing country songs. In what is clearly a case of The Beasties not knowing how to fill up their down time, the group came up with an entire backstory for the Country Mike character involving drug addiction, redemption, and a television show. For a long time, the group was committed to making people believe Country Mike was a real, separate individual. When the ruse was finally over, bandmate Adam Yauch shared a different version of how this alter ego came to be:

"At some point after Ill Communication came out, Mike got hit in the head by a large foreign object and lost all of his memory. As it started coming back he believed that he was a country singer named Country Mike. The psychologists told us that if we didn't play along with Mike's fantasy, he could be in grave danger. Finally he came back to his senses."