In pop culture, some artists present themselves using performance art and in a certain avant-garde way, like Lady Gaga, while some others are using their actual music to create this certain style of performance art.
XoBrooklynne has gotten popular online for spreading body positivity but has also gotten a mountain of hate along with it. When Brooklynne said she was releasing a song the internet immediately went to tear her down with hate comments. There was a song release, a music video, an album, and multiple collaborations with other people on the internet. Turns out, it was all a character.
Brooklynne spent months planning out a character she was going to play over all of her platforms. When the album was released, everyone knew she was not serious about music. It was 14 variations of the same song. She later shared that it was a huge performance piece she was doing and that she was using music to do it.
Though a little older, we can’t forget in 2015 when the internet went crazy over Who Is Fancy? Jake Hagood, aka Fancy, released the song “Goodbye” in Feb. 2015 along with the idea of having the world guess who Fancy was. Three music videos were put out, all the exact same, except for who the main person was. Each music video dealt with the theme of gender identity and body positivity.
The internet was going crazy trying to figure out which one of them was Fancy. In the end, none of those people from the music video were. The real Fancy is Jake Hagood and revealed himself on stage at a performance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Another internet project mixing music and performance art is Lauren Wheeler or Classiclaur on TikTok. After getting one of those comically large birthday cards from an ex-boyfriend and opening it only to find it blank except for a little note on the outside, Lauren decided to do something with it. She has stated in videos the card felt like performance art and that she was going to create her own piece or performance art with the card.
Lauren writes poetry, not music, so she has enlisted the help of different musicians to turn her poems into a breakup album. There are 12 songs (poems) on the album Birthday Card, from folk songs to pop songs, each artist is adapting the poems in a different way. The track titles are little phrases picked out of the small note that was left on the back of the birthday card. There is also a CD being sold with the little CD booklet in the case, and where the song discography usually is are her poems. The album is not out yet, but people are looking forward to it.
While these are just three examples, there are more artists out there using music in new and creative ways. Whether it’s pranking all of TikTok or making a breakup album based on a spiderman birthday card.
