The rising artists making reinvention their number one rule

In partnership with Warner Bros. UK

Mickey 17, the epic new sci-fi opus from Parasite director Bong Joon-ho, is all about reinvention. It’s a reinvention of sorts of Joon-ho, in that it’s broader and even bigger in scope than his previous cinematic outings. And it’s an adaptation of the source material, Edward Ashton’s sci-fi novel Mickey7, as Joon-ho gets creative with his interpretation of the story.

We meet Mickey (Robert Pattinson), a down-on-his luck former business owner who signs up for a scheme overseen by political power couple Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Yifa (Toni Collette). Mickey agrees to have his entire persona replicated so that he can be ‘reprinted’ over and over again for scientific testing. It got us thinking: which new artists have reinvented themselves boldly, fearlessly and with wild creativity in recent years? Picture David Bowie and Lady Gaga, but still on the rise.

Come with us to the human printing chamber to find out…

Chappell Roan

Back in 2017, Kayleigh Amstutz released a dark, goth-tinged EP, ‘School Nights’, under the name Chappell Roan. When she appeared on the cover of NME in 2024, she’d been reborn as a drag-inspired queer icon who sang about the joy of a great gay bar (‘Pink Pony Club’) and packed her tunes with instantly quotable pop culture references (“Get it hot like Papa John,” she sassed on ‘Femininomenon’).

Underlining the fact that she remade herself as a super-charged musical oddball, she’s been known to sing Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ at her shows. And now? She’s reinvented herself as an activist, using her Best New Artist win at the 2025 Grammys to demand record labels “treat their artists as valuable employees”.

Ethel Cain

The 26-year-old Floridian singer-songwriter is included in our list to prove that creative rebirth and fluidity of expression needn’t always be visual. Ethel Cain’s 2022 debut album, ‘Preacher’s Daughter’, was a slice of accessible goth-pop that marked her as a critical darling and a ‘90s-style indie auteur for the social media age. Surely her second album would follow in the same vein?

Reader, this year she returned with ‘Perverts’, a supremely weird collection of lo-fi ambient tracks so seemingly uncommercial that it’s been seen as a “studio recording” rather than an album. It also happens to be darkly beautiful, with moments of bright musical ecstasy rising up through the murk when you least expect them. The detractors need to look at Bowie’s Berlin years.

Lynks

Like Leigh Bowery with a disco ball and an Ableton rip, Lynks has cultivated a persona designed to shock, provoke and – if you’re with it – delight. The mysterious masked musician, who dons colourful and outlandish drag outfits, doesn’t reveal their true identity or much about their background, save for the fact that they used to release music via their real name.

This music has been described as indie, dream-pop and folk (Lynks told NME that the folk label was “the least correct”), which suggests their reinvention has been much more than a visual one. ‘ABOMINATION’, their debut album from 2024, is a Day-Glo mash-up of rave, pop and experimental dissonance. The folkies in the room might cover their ears, but Gaga would be proud.

Horsegiirl

Like Lynks, HorsegiirL (the double ‘iis’ and capital L are important, OK?) keeps her real identity to herself, preferring to foreground the persona she’s stuck through the proverbial reprinting machine – she sometimes also goes by Stella Stallion. She’s known for her trademark horse’s head mask – replete with a love heart-shaped birthmark – and is best experienced through one of her DJ sets, during which she spins gabber, techno, happy hardcore and more.

HorsegiirL claims to be from the bucolic Sunshine Farms and her fans, known as ‘Farmies’, share her penchant for raiding the dressing-up box in a distinctly DIY manner. “Farmies come to frolic, play, gallop and have a fucking great time,” HorsegiirL told NME in her 2024 interview. Yeehaw!

Alt Blk Era

Nyrobi and Chaya Beckett-Messam are Alt Blk Era, the MOBO and Heavy Music Awards-nominated genre-mashers who slam rap, drill, nu-metal, drum ’n’ bass and more in their sonic blender and tip the result over the heads over anyone square enough to object. They wear flamboyant outfits – sort of nu-rave Victoriana – and make serrated, metallic music that sounds at home both in the club and the mosh pit.

When they were younger, they told NME at the end of last year, they were drawn to reggae, soul and R&B, before discovering their equal love of harder rock sounds. “We stumbled across this genre with no prime knowledge of what alternative music was,” Nyrobi said of their reinvention.

Two Shell

What with Lynks and HorsegiirL bringing maximum playfulness to the dancefloor, you might feel dance music is currently enjoying a golden age of creativity, silliness and self-expression. Well, you’d have a point. Take Two Shell, the anonymous dance duo about whom little is known besides the fact that they love the Sugababes, as their pulsing rework of ‘Round Round’ proved (the ‘Babes agreed, re-recording their vocals especially for the track). They’ve even been known to send imposters to press interviews.

With their fractured fusion of techno, hyper-pop, garage and more, their only rule appears to be that there are no rules, which makes them quintessential torchbearers for the no-fucks attitude pioneered by the likes of Bowie and Gaga. Anyone for a reprint?

‘Mickey 17’ is released in UK cinemas March 7

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