Celebrity culture can be damaging for many reasons, especially for artists who often bare their souls in their music. Those people who don’t like the attention that comes with being in the spotlight often become elusive, living away from the public eye.
Here are four artists who gave up the spotlight to live quietly instead.
Kate Bush
For as highly regarded an artist as Kate Bush has been for the past several decades, her distinct lack of celebrity may come as a surprise. Then again, she seems like exactly the type of person who would reject the spotlight. Just don’t call her a recluse. Instead, Bush has long preferred to live a quiet life in the U.K. with her husband and son. Her discography has been a little patchy, with long stretches between albums. But Bush typically chooses her projects carefully, like the 2024 single, “Snowflake”, which benefited the War Child charity.
“I do like to try and live as normal a life as possible,” she said in 2005. “I just find that much more interesting than spending my life living in publicity.”
Lorde
While Lorde hasn’t completely stepped away from the spotlight, she’s worked out a way to live a quieter, more balanced life. In 2021, she told People that she’s “not built for pop star life. To have a public-facing existence is something I find really intense and is something I’m not good at.” Instead, she said her fans have allowed her to show up, make music, tour for a bit, until she’s exhausted all creative avenues. Then, “I’m going to go home, and you’re not going to see me for two or three or four years.”
So, Lorde typically comes and goes from the spotlight. She first left social media in 2018, coming and going from there as well. But in her in-between time, she said she’s showing up more in her real life for what actually matters. “And when I’ve done that,” she said, “and I’m like, all right, that’s enough of that for a little while, I’ll come back again.”
Enya
Enya has been a household name for years, but it’s been a long time since she was in the spotlight. As one of the wealthiest musicians in the U.K., earning this fortune from album sales alone, Enya has been able to live a low-profile life. But, like Kate Bush, she doesn’t like to be labeled a recluse. Instead, she just likes her music to be the center of attention.
“My private lifestyle bothers a lot of people,” she told The Guardian in 2000. “I love the music to be known, but I’m not after fame for myself.” Additionally, Enya is content with her solitary life. She never married and had no children, but often had cats. She lives in Manderley Castle in Killiney, Ireland, which she bought and renovated herself in 1997. Her most recent public appearance was in May 2025, when she was spotted attending a wedding. Before that, she hadn’t been seen in public in eight years.
Fiona Apple
Since her rapid rise to fame in the 90s and what most critics would call a subsequent crash-and-burnout, Fiona Apple has retreated from the public eye. This was more out of necessity than strictly desire. Keeping her life private became a way to shelter herself from the onslaught of misogyny, body shaming, and other insults that were often directed her way. When she spoke her mind at the 1997 MTV VMAs, publicly calling out the toxic music industry, she was quickly thrown to the wolves. Taking long hiatuses between albums and eluding the spotlight became more about self-preservation.
Her most recent album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, came out in 2020, and she’s been out of the public eye since then. However, in May 2025, she dropped a new single for the first time in five years. “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)” was made in support of women and mothers who have been held in pretrial detention.
Photo by Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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