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Part of Why musician lookalikes owe more to styling than to faces
Musician lookalikes mistakes: how to check persona, styling and eras
Common mistakes when judging musician lookalikes, from album art and personas to band styling, eras and viral comparisons, plus checks before paying.
People make different mistakes about musicians' faces than about actors, because the images differ.
A musician's public image is a persona. It is built for a release, rebuilt for the next, and often made to read from the back of a hall, not a close-up. Below are the errors that follow, with a way to catch each one.
What to take away
- Album art is a designed object, and the face on it, if there is one, was chosen to fit the design.
- A persona is not a person. It can be shared, inherited, masked and reinvented.
- Members of one act are styled to match each other, so "they look alike" is often "they were dressed alike".
- One performer across several release cycles can look like several people. The reverse error is the common one.
Mistake: reading the cover as a portrait
An album cover is a piece of design with a job to do. When it carries a face, that face has been lit, styled, retouched and sometimes composited to serve the design.
Two sleeves show it: the Beatles inside a satin-suited collage on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and KISS painted by Ken Kelly on Destroyer.
Stripped of its sleeve, a record carries no face at all. Everything a listener thinks they know about a performer's looks arrived through packaging somebody designed.
It may be an illustration made from a photograph, a model instead of the performer, or the performer with a treatment that changes the face's proportions.
Comparing a cover to a photograph of another musician is comparing a design to a picture. Find an image of the performer that was not made for a release, and see whether the impression survives. The look is a stack and the cover is the top layer, made thickest on purpose.
Where the money sits
- Tribute bookings. A promoter pays for a performer whose styling carries the act.
- Licensing. A brand puts a musician's likeness, or a close copy, into a product or a poster.
- Ad campaigns. A lookalike in a spot can read as the real artist's endorsement.
Fees follow what is bought: the venue, the city, band size, and who supplies the backline. A bad match costs a refunded deposit, a cancelled date or a reshoot.
US likeness law sits with the states: California Civil Code 3344 and New York Civil Rights Law 50 and 51 are the two most cited.
Mistake: confusing the persona with the person
Some acts are built around a mask, costume, or character the audience knows better than any face. Some personas outlast the person who first wore them, or are shared by several people at once.
KISS: the Demon, the Starchild, the Catman and the Spaceman have been worn by replacement members. Daft Punk: Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, two men behind robot helmets.
When a viewer says a performer looks like one of these acts, they mean the performer resembles a design. That design may not match any particular face.
Even without a mask, a persona has a designed outline: hair, hat, glasses, stance. Resembling that outline is easy, and the tribute trade is built on that ease.
Ask what the resemblance is to. If it is to the outline, it is to a costume, and anyone can wear a costume.
Mistake: treating a band's styling as a family resemblance
Members of one act are routinely dressed, groomed and photographed to match. Matching hair, matching clothes, the same lighting, the same pose in the press shot. This is done so that the act reads as a unit. Viewers then report that the members look alike, and sometimes go further and speculate that they are related.
The Ramones: four unrelated men, one surname, one bowl cut, one leather jacket. The Beatles were barbered and suited to match before them.
The second step makes a claim about people's families from a stylist's decision. This site does not make that claim.
The first step is a mistake: the members were styled to look alike, so noticing that means you noticed the styling. Look at images of the members from before the act, or from outside it, where styling was not applied.
Mistake: one performer, several eras, several "people"
A musician's look is rebuilt for each release. Hair, color, weight, and clothing all change. The whole visual register shifts on purpose.
David Bowie in 1972, 1976 and 1983 is one man in three looks. Madonna did the same between Like a Virgin in 1984 and Ray of Light in 1998.
What changes between release cycles
Visual element
- Hair length, color, style
- Changes face frame
- Facial hair
- Changes jaw and mouth
- Eyewear and headwear
- Hides eyes, changes outline
- Weight and fitness
- Changes face contours
- Photographic style
- Changes lens, light, grade
Effect on apparent identity
- Hair length, color, style
- Facial hair
- Eyewear and headwear
- Weight and fitness
- Photographic style
Face processing works on the whole arrangement rather than on features one at a time, and hair and outline are a large part of that arrangement.
The mistake runs in two directions. Comparing a performer's current image to another musician's is often comparing this cycle's design to that one's.
One performer, several eras
| What changes between cycles | What it does to apparent identity |
|---|---|
| Hair length, color and style | Changes the frame around the face, the strongest cue there is |
| Facial hair | Changes the visible shape of the jaw and mouth |
| Eyewear and headwear | Changes the outline and hides the eyes |
| Weight and fitness | Changes the face's contours, not just the body |
| Photographic style of the campaign | Changes lens, light, grade and retouching for every image in the cycle |
Line up one performer's images across three release cycles before comparing them to anyone else. If the three would not be sorted as one person by a stranger, no comparison to a second person can be trusted.
Mistake: comparing to a younger self
A related error. A musician's early images are often the most circulated, since they were attached to the work that made them known.
That early image gets compared with a newer performer, who seems to resemble it. Two people at a similar age, in similar styling for similar work, produced similar frames. The side-by-side hides the age gap well: it shows two frames and no dates.
Elton John in 1970 and Elton John in 1985 read as two people. Michael Jackson's Jackson 5 images and his Bad-era images get sorted the same way.
Mistake: taking the viral frame at face value
A comparison that circulates was made by someone who chose both frames from a very large supply, and chose them to agree. The alternatives were not shown. Suggestion then does the rest, because the caption tells you what to see before you look.
The "Paul is dead" photo analyses of 1969 used reversed prints and chosen frames, and fell apart when the same photographs were dated. The side-by-sides of Harry Styles and Mick Jagger rest on the same trick.
Choose your own images, from ordinary conditions, from the same year, and look again. Most circulated musician comparisons do not survive this, and the ones that do are still comparisons of images.
Before you pay
- Name what you are buyinga tribute booking, a licensed likeness, or a campaign appearance.
- Ask for the performer's own unretouched photographs and recent video.
- Compare like with likesame year, same light, same framing.
- Say what the resemblance rests onhair, glasses, a mask, a costume, or the face.
- For a booking, put the name and likeness terms in the contract before the deposit moves.
- For a campaign, ask whether a viewer could take the lookalike for the real artist. Confusion, not resemblance, drives a false endorsement claim.
Common questions
Is it wrong to say two musicians have a similar look?
"Look" is an honest word, if it is understood as the styling. It becomes a mistake when it is treated as a statement about their faces or, worse, their families.
Why do musicians change their appearance so much?
Each release is a visual product as well as a musical one, and the look is part of what is being released.
How do you verify a lookalike before paying for a booking or a campaign?
Ask for the performer's own unretouched photographs and recent video, check what the resemblance rests on, and get the name and likeness terms in writing.
What is the most reliable check?
Find images of each performer that were not made for a campaign, from the same year, and compare those. If none exist, you have a comparison of two campaigns.
