A spooky mask makes him a rock star. Here’s why he takes it off

It was a risky and personal decision for TikTok phenomenon Charley Yang, aka Boywithuke, to reveal his face to his fans.

BoyWithUke performs onstage at Montmartre on February 17, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Kristy Sparow/Getty Images)

What if your music becomes wildly popular but nobody knows it is yours? This is Charley Yang’s dilemma. A little more than four years ago, Yang – an aspiring if reluctant teenage songwriter from Massachusetts – starts uploading music and videos to the internet under the lower-case pseudonym boywithuke.

The moniker is literal: Yang is indeed a boy who strums a ukulele, over bouncy hip-hop beats and with angsty lyrics like on his 2021 anthem Toxic: “All my friends are toxic, all ambitionless/So rude and always negative/I need new friends, but it’s not that quick and easy.”

Yang’s expectations are modest. “I don’t expect 100 people to listen,” he says.

Instead, billions listen – more than a billion for Toxic alone. Boywithuke’s music and videos go spectacularly viral via platforms such as TikTok, where he now has 7.7 million followers.

Adolescent boys in particular seem to gravitate towards it, ­including this writer’s high school aged son who, weary of Dad’s carpool soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac and basketball podcasts, is thrilled to find an artist his old man doesn’t know or understand.

I start listening and I can see why young fans are into boywithuke. Yang’s songs – catchy, confessional, deceptively simple – veer from anxious and comical to profane. Kids, whose social lives and schooling are torpedoed by a gloomy pandemic, eat it up.

There is also this: nobody knows who boywithuke is because he wears a mask.

Worried about how his music will be received, Yang makes his TikTok videos and later performs in a cheap programmable LED mask he buys on Amazon.

The boywithuke look is born: sweatshirt, hood pulled over the hair, the LED face mask set to a haunting pair of eyes with no mouth. Yang even installs a tiny microphone so he can sing live.

BoyWithUke performs onstage at Montmartre on February 17, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Kristy Sparow/Getty Images)

At first the disguise is liberating. Boywithuke can perform on US talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! or play a date at a sold-out club, and then Yang can take off the mask backstage and wander out into the crowd unnoticed.

“I can go anywhere,” says Yang, now 22. “There are a few instances where I meet people who are fans, face-to-face, and they have no idea who I am.”

He isn’t the first masked musician; country music star Orville Peck has long used a Lone-Ranger-style eye-mask in performance. Early on, Yang takes pains to conceal his identity.

“It is definitely a big secret at first,” Yang’s younger brother Harris says.

Yang’s manager, James Dai, recalls radio appearances in which the artist sneaks into the station’s bathroom and re-emerges, like Clark Kent transforming into Superman, as boywithuke. “Logistically, it is weird to navigate,” Dai says.

Yang becomes an accidental rock star. By his own description an introverted kid – “I don’t talk a lot,” he says – Yang grows up playing piano and violin. He plays high school soccer. Learning ukulele is a lark.

“He gets a ukulele to impress a girl,” Harris Yang says.

Charley Yang gets good at it, though. Yang’s music grows more sophisticated and layered.

He experiments with collaborators, instruments and structure, uploading frequently. Yang belongs to a new generation of streaming artists, untethered to the standard dynamics of the record business.

In the old days, an artist would record an album and wait months for the public reaction. Yang is less precious. He eagerly posts unfinished songs and snippets, retooling versions after noting the fan response.

“Why would you release a song you don’t know people are going to like, when you can release the best part of it and see if they like it?” Yang asks.

Independence remains key for Yang. Boywithuke’s most recent album, Burnout, is released in partnership with AWAL, a distribution company that has worked with artists such as Djo and Icelandic sensation Laufey.

BoyWithUke performs onstage at Montmartre on February 17, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Kristy Sparow/Getty Images)

“We are fans before he does any record deal,” AWAL chief executive Lonny Olinick says.

Importantly, Yang understands modern music’s essential delivery device: social media. With the spooky mask, he has a clever aesthetic. Boywithuke’s videos are funny and crisp. The algorithm grows to love him.

“I don’t think you can teach someone how to make a really, really compelling TikTok video,” Dai says. “He just has a natural talent for knowing how to tell a good story in a really short amount of time.”

As boywithuke’s popularity explodes, however, Yang grows weary of the mask. Anonymity feels like confinement, as does the constant grind of making masked videos. Maybe he does want people to know who he is.

“In my head, it is like, I can’t be taken seriously and make the music I want to make with this whole character and gimmick,” Yang says.

“It is eating at my heart and ego, and who I am, and I just don’t want to do it any more.”

The mask is also physically uncomfortable. “You’re just breathing old breath,” he says. “It is hot.”

Still, dropping the mask will be risky. What if it is an essential part of boywithuke’s appeal?

Yang has had enough. In the northern autumn of 2023, he finally will reveal himself.

“I wear the mask to protect myself,” he writes on Instagram. “I’ve come to realise that the mask has actually been negatively affecting my personal life, my creativity and my mental and physical health … for the sake of my wellbeing, I am moving forward.

“Here I am,” he concludes.

For the first time, boywithuke publishes a photo of himself as Charley. Fans greet him rapturously.

Without the mask: Charley Yang, who performed under the alias Boywithuke. Picture: Connor Gaskey

Since then, Yang has occupied twin identities. He has just finished the US leg of a world tour. Most of the time he plays unmasked. Occasionally, a masked boywithuke appears.

Yang is an electric performer, far more engaged with the crowd than his moody songs may suggest.

“I’m a different person on stage than I’m in my room,” he says.

This new tour serves as a kind of farewell. Yang says Burnout will be his last as boywithuke. From here, he will record and release music as himself. His new stage name, Chandol, is his Korean moniker.

The uke is being phased out as well.

“Dude, I just get bored of the ukulele,” he says.

I ask him if it is possible we may see boywithuke in his 70s, playing some casino somewhere, his old LED mask yanked out of the attic for a nostalgia tour.

“No way,” Yang says. “That’s my nightmare.”

Boywithuke’s latest album is Burnout.

The Wall Street Journal.