Fame can be a funny thing. Some music artists find it to be the best thing that ever happened to them. Others feel like it’s a hopeless and debilitating experience.
For every Taylor Swift or Noel Gallagher, who Buzzfeed documented as openly loving fame, there are at least two more artists who don’t share their elation. For example:
Neil Peart
Rush is easily the biggest prog-rock band of all time, but late drummer Neil Peart was not comfortable with the level of visibility they achieved upon success. In fact, Far Out Magazine notes that Peart was one of the more introverted rock stars to ever live. We know this because he said it himself in one of Rush’s most beloved songs, “Limelight”.
The drummer once spoke about the song’s meaning, saying it was “an attempt to clarify for myself and hopefully others a thing that I learned: never complain, never explain. I try not to complain, but I can’t help but to explain,” he shared, speaking to CBC, as noted by Far Out.
“That was an attempt on my part to explain myself as an introvert,” Peart continued, “feeling totally alienated by the ‘gilded cage’ of it all, and it’s been remarkable over time how many young musicians have come up to me and told me what that song means to them when they faced the same transition in their life.”
Peart has long been considered one of the greatest rock drummers ever, but this praise was something else he wasn’t very comfortable with. Sadly, Peart passed away in 2020.
mitski
Singer-songwriter Mitski has been making acclaimed alt-pop/indie rock music for more than a decade. In an interview with Vulture, Mitski was very candid about her aversion to the exploitative nature of fame and celebrity. “You can’t be a human being,” she said. “You have to be a product that’s being bought and sold and consumed, and you have to perceive yourself that way in order to function.”
Offering some insight into how this has impacted her, Mitski added, “I am a foreigner to myself now.”
fiona apple
Growing up in the 90s, Fiona Apple was an intriguing musical figure. She was very no-nonsense. As evident by her 1997 MTV VMAs acceptance speech for Best New Artist in a Video for “Sleep to Dream”.
“So, what I want to say is, um, everybody out there that’s watching, everybody that’s watching this world? This world is bulls***,” she said. “&ou shouldn’t model your life—wait a second—you shouldn’t model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we’re wearing and what we’re saying and everything. Go with yourself. Go with yourself.”
I remember watching this live and feeling both the danger and the freedom in what she was advocating. Soon, it became clear that this was a woman who wasn’t really interested in selling out for the music industry.
Writer Emily Nussbaum offered some more current perspective on this in a 2020 profile of Apple for The New Yorker. “Fame has long been a jarring experience for Apple, who has dealt since childhood with obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and anxiety,” Nussbaum wrote.
“Apple knows the cliché about early fame—that it freezes you at the age you achieved it,” Nussbaum later added, “She’d never had to toil in anonymity, and had learned her craft and made her mistakes in public.”
Kurt Cobain
There are certainly Nirvana fans who disagree with the notion that Kurt Cobain “didn’t want” fame. Even if you think this way, though, there’s plenty of evidence that he was not engaging with fame the same way a lot of his contemporaries were, and still do.
Cobain was mostly very reserved and awkward in interviews. He preferred to use his art for its purpose: speaking his mind and expressing himself. In the 2022 book Kurt Cobain: The Last Interview, author Dana Spiotta offered some perspective on Cobain’s wariness about fame, noting that it was much more about not having control over the trajectory.
“He denied he had ambition, but then admitted it,” Spiotta wrote, per Pitchfork. “He wanted to make records and have an audience.” Spiotta then added, “He just wanted to do it on his terms, like his punk heroes.”
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