Oliver Tree

Oliver Tree Nickell built one of the strangest careers in recent pop, an act constructed almost entirely out of commitment to a bit: the bowl cut, the enormous trousers, the scooter, and the repeated retirement announcements that nobody could quite take at face value. He signed to Atlantic in 2017 after When I'm Down went viral, and Ugly Is Beautiful produced Alien Boy, Hurt and Let Me Down. Life Goes On and Miss You made him a genuine international chart presence in the early 2020s. The music was always good enough that the performance art around it read as a choice rather than a substitute.