In popular music, the notion of authenticity seemingly bridges the gap between pop artists’ music and their pop lives. We may see artists’ claim to authenticity in terms, such as realness and honesty, as a crucial factor in the construction of their personae.
Exemplified by claims such as, ”I do not have an image, I am just who I am”, the Norwegian pop artist Marit Larsen employs stereotypes of age and gender to create a persona that exemplifies authenticity as an unmarked term, functioning as a binary opposite to purportedly dishonest ideas of strategically staging a persona.
Analysing Larsen’s self-reflexive discourse in interviews and TV appearances, I investigate into how assertions of honesty and realness are substantiated through her persona. Central to my argument is the theory that the persona is never identical to the person, as the persona must also accommodate the listener and their desires. Even though theories of the artist’s persona go against any notion of authenticity, the deconstruction of the persona as separate from the real person reminds us that we cannot know what the actual person adds or subtracts in order to create the persona, and enables critical analysis of the artist’s purported authenticity.