A masked man with a booming bass-baritone stepped onto the country music stage and refused to show his face. Orville Peck, the South African-born former punk drummer behind the fringed mask, has become one of modern country's most striking figures, channeling the vocal ghosts of Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison through a persona built entirely on his own terms.

His path to Nashville-adjacent stardom ran through ballet studios, punk clubs, and London drama school, and his story flips the authenticity debate on its head. The mask, it turns out, is not a gimmick hiding the man; it is the device that lets an openly queer outsider tell the truth in a genre that has always secretly belonged to outcasts.

• He learned guitar on a broken five-string instrument, forcing him to invent his own chords

• Before country fame he traine ...