The Art of Pseudonyms
Nicknames, aliases, usernames, everything, and anything in between have become so common, that we don’t even bat an eye when someone on Twitter named LordoftheNoobs23 pops up on your feed with a banger.
Early Use
Although the term pseudonym is most frequently used today on the internet, it first dates back a couple of years. A pen name is a pseudonym adopted by authors. Some female authors used male pen names when writing was a male-dominated profession to seek more success and to escape prejudice.
During the 1970s authors were discouraged from writing more than one book a year because it would oversaturate the market and diminish sales. Stephan King secretly published books for some time under the name Richard Bachman. First, it was to get around that rule, and second, Richard Bachman was a test to see if readers would still care about Stephen King books if they no longer had the King name attached to them. He wondered if his success was due to natural talent or just a product of the hype of his first book Carrie.
The Tip of the Iceberg
Pseudonyms are now mainstream and all around us. The ability to toggle between multiple social media accounts — originally developed so that people could switch between their personal and corporate accounts has led to everyday people having main and pseudonym “private” accounts. This has played a big part in society and will continue to do so.
Friends you meet online for the most part have an online persona that is not their actual name. Social media is the king of this. You can have your main account where you have your friends and family, posting pictures of your vacation and loved ones, and with the click of a button you’re logged onto your “alt” account with a third of the follower account of your main, but you’re apart of a larger community who shares the same specific interest as you. You all go back and forth and talk about how great a particular artist is, or how focused all of you are on making money and what you’re doing to achieve that and motivate each other.
Diving Deeper
The most riveting part about pseudonyms is how there are no restraints on how you use them. They’re not your real name so you can build up a reputation under them. This has become extremely popular with musicians for a number of reasons.
“I think when a pseudonym comes in is when you still have a love for making the work, and you don’t want the work to become overshadowed by this thing that’s been built around you, based on what people know about you, and that’s when it’s really fun to create fake names and write under them.”
- Taylor Swift via Rolling Stone
In the Rolling Stone article, Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift both mention that they’ve written music under respective pseudonyms, Taylor’s was Nils Sjöberg and Paul’s was Fireman. Taylor Swift co-wrote the song “This Is What You Came For” by Calvin Harris under her, Nils Sjöberg pseudonym, and McCartney attested to creating a whole album with a close friend of his under Fireman — it sold a whopping 15 copies, but he recalled enjoying every second of it because he did it out of the love he has for music.
Patterns & Trends
Pseudonyms have been used for rollouts in music and it works exceptionally well. Most recently, Kendrick Lamar gave himself a new alias — Oklama, he signed off as Oklama on all his press for his most recent album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. You can dive deeper into its meaning and origin, but the whole point is to add another layer for fans to appreciate and dissect. The alias is art in and of itself. Another amazing rollout with a well-known pseudonym was Tyler, the Creator with Tyler Baudelaire which alludes to the French poet Charles Baudelaire whose work has been regarded by music journalists as comparable to the explicit nature and themes of Tyler’s music.
Artists’ pseudonyms usually are credited in their music. Mac Miller and MF DOOM were rappers with their fair share of unique names, both very distinct yet similar at the same time.
“I like creating these characters because I feel like the identity of Mac Miller is… to me, I don’t even know who ‘Mac Miller the Artist’ is, like what I represent, what I stand for. The thing I like about these characters is I feel like I can bring all these pieces of myself and emphasize them.”
- Mac Miller via HNHH
Larry Fisherman according to Mac was a part of him that was the studio rat, weeks straight grinding beat after beat, Larry Fisherman was credited in a lot of his early work and was known to be solely a producer. MF DOOM had something very similar, he’s only Metal Fingers when he’s producing. Of course, they both have many more names and each one has its specific origin, you can go deep down the rabbit hole with any artist and their pseudonyms, it truly adds another layer to their art and being able to appreciate everything from the music, to the thought that goes behind these names.
Conclusion
To sum it up, a pseudonym is the difference between who you are, and what you’re good at. You can emphasize any talent and/or hobby you have and wrap it into a pseudonym and let your creativity run wild without fear of judgment. The uses for them are unlimited, use it to let your creativity flow, to post about your private life, to speak to people who have the same interests as you, or create a whole world around your aliases, it’s truly up to you.
— MT
