With his signature bowl cut and color block jackets, Oliver Tree has carefully curated an offbeat image. His public persona feels like an elaborate comedy routine, one in which you’re not quite in on the joke. His inspirations are “Criss Angel, Lloyd Christmas, and a bunch of filmmakers you’ve never heard of.” He posted a photo on Instagram of him bathing in Hot Cheetos. In one of his music videos, he is crucified on a giant Razor scooter. “I would call myself a troll,” he said, in response to those who label his humor ironic. 

But this act would not be as funny or as captivating if he weren’t so committed to it. Rather than letting this facade fade away after achieving the desired attention, he lets his art (which includes this public identity) speak for itself. “Honestly I prefer to keep a degree of separation from my fans. I give them everything I can with my art and my performances but I don’t have any more to give beyond that. I love them more than anything in the world, but if they really love me, they respect my privacy.” There’s a mutual understanding between Oliver and his fans that the sunglasses-wearing “Scooter God” is fake, but that’s beside the point: the character is more interesting than the truth. Still, Oliver plays with fact and fiction and relishes in the moments when his audience confuses the two. “[The] bowl cut is actually a wig. A lot of people already know that, but there’s a large portion of the population who thinks it’s real and I think that’s hilarious,” he said (he also mentions that his favorite meme is “anything with a bowl cut”). 

His persona may be ripe for memes, but if you aren’t blinded by his neon style, his indietronica jams are catchy and poetic. His image inevitably factors into the music, transforming it into something truly surreal and absurd. Would “Hurt” (Oliver’s hit single) resonate the same way if we didn’t have the imagery of Oliver in oversized clothing lying in a casket or falling out of buildings in the music video? He takes his art seriously. It’s not insincere. “If I don’t suffer physically and mentally for my art, it’s not worth creating,” he said. Fittingly, he often has visible injuries in Instagram posts and music videos.  

Naturally, Oliver Tree is also divisive. He may have earned legions of fans for his distinctive vogue, but he’s also received some criticism. He’s unbothered, of course, and considers himself lucky to even have a platform. “Personally, I think all great art is polarizing. But I’m in no place to say that about my own art. I just create, and if I’m lucky people will see it. Critics and the general public get to think whatever they want.”

Finding the “real” Oliver Tree is a waste of time, and circumvents the true value of his art. But the anecdotes he shared from his (presumably) real life are exactly the sort of situations you would expect Oliver Tree to be in. He plays at Bar Mitzvahs and even a quinceanera, which was “very interesting experiences in their own ways.” The most transformative ordeal of his life took place at Burning Man. “When I was 17 I had an acid trip at Burning Man where I watched my own death and saw my entire family crying at my own funeral. I ended up running naked through the desert for 12 hours.” There are glimpses at a softer side of Oliver. He thinks he’ll be nostalgic for this stage of his project when he’s starting out. “That and falling in love,” he adds. 

Ultimately, Oliver Tree is tailor-made for this era in which bucket hats and chunky sneakers are trendy, this post-modernist, irony-to-the-point-of-sincerity epoch. It seems like if you believe in him, he becomes real.