A rising Gen Z indie musician known as Betty Hammerschlag has turned out to be a middle-aged man, in an elaborate — and dare we say a bit creepy — deception that fooled everyone from fans to music critics to the artist’s own collaborators.
Music journalist Shawn Reynaldo blew open the charade in an exposé published Wednesday in his newsletter First Floor. By all appearances, Hammerschlag presented herself as a young woman still in art school, using pictures of women in her social media posts and promotional materials, and writing in a pointedly whimsical, all-lowercase and flowery emoji-laden style intended to evoke Gen Z.
Hammerschlag’s music has been featured and praised in notable publications like The Guardian and The Quietus as recently as last week, and has received quite a bit of airtime on the renowned British music streamer NTS Radio. That includes songs from her latest album which, we kid you not, is titled “fake girl.”
But Reynaldo dug around and discovered that Hammerschlag didn’t actually exist, and was in reality the creation of Tilman Hornig, a 45-year-old (or possibly older) musician from Germany.
