Orville Peck
Through success, love, and heartbreak, artist Orville Peck has no plans to stop.
By Amy Higgins
Since 2019, country music star Orville Peck has remained out front in his craft, but the finish line is perpetually — and purposely — out of sight. In 2025 alone, the masked singer outpaced the typical work schedule, balancing a new album, while filming a movie, organizing an annual festival, and making his Broadway debut. And 2026 is already active, with a concert tour, promoting the upcoming “Street Fighter” movie, and writing music for his next full-length album.
While his debut album “Pony” put Peck on the map, his early life was already spent in the spotlight, with theater acting and drumming for punk rock bands. He led with ambition and hard work but gained little financial reward. “I grew up in the DIY scene and the first, I don’t know, eight years of my touring career were me booking tours old school style and showing up to venues and punk houses and sleeping on people’s floors and traveling in a broken-down van,” Peck explains.
As the singer-songwriter made strides in his career, his tattoo collection grew. The animal lover’s skin is predominantly peppered with critters, such as a golden orb spider, a dancing bull, a hyena, and a puff adder snake that feigns writhing when the artist plays guitar. There’s a lot of sentiment in his ink, too, including a wildebeest skull, a tribute to his grandfather, Bill, and the letters “T-R-E-V” on his knuckles that honor his father, Trevor. Maybe most meaningful of all, Peck’s sister-in-law, Lauren Pitout (@lauren__tattoo), is the artist behind most of his ink.
The South Africa-born artist’s life and skin look drastically different today than they did in his youth, but his ambition and hard work remain constant.
The Year of the Thrill
2025 was a thrill ride for Peck, one with monumental career highs that kept him away from home for 11 months. A lifelong theater lover, he was cast in the lead role as Emcee for the Broadway play “Cabaret,” something Peck had long desired.
Formally trained in acting at a prestigious conservatory in London, Peck grew up performing on stage, acting for many years before his mysterious masked man persona became recognized worldwide. “I’ve always done acting, sort of in tandem with music, but took a big break from acting and especially theater for about 15 years, and so this was my return to that,” he says. “It’s kind of an incredible dream come true.”
A 128-show run should have left him weary, yet Peck was inspired and wanted to challenge his vulnerability with his songwriting. “Obviously I was performing without my mask, which was so new to me, but the nature of the material being so heavy — with me going in really wanting to do a good job — pushed me to even more new levels of vulnerability,” he says.
What ensued was a seven-track EP album titled “Appaloosa,” a name that aptly aligns with his previous horse-inspired album titles. “I always call my albums horse things, and it’s always a bit indicative of what kind of ‘horse’ I am at the time or what the album’s about,” Peck says. “An Appaloosa is a spotted horse. They have a polka-dot coat that’s very, very unique. And so, a lot of this album is about me finally having this embracing of the fact that I’ve never really been able to fit in, and I always kind of stand out in many different ways in my life, but it’s about embracing that uniqueness and celebrating it.”
Songs from his previous albums were mostly about the “sad, disastrous effects of love” rather than love itself, so Peck pulled away from heartbreak and leaned into love in his song “Oh My Days,” where he tells the story of finding love after extreme heartbreak. “‘Oh My Days’ is about talking yourself out of something that you know is making you happy because you’re frightened — and overcoming those fears, too,” he says.
Songs from his previous albums were mostly about the “sad, disastrous effects of love” rather than love itself, so Peck pulled away from heartbreak and leaned into love in his song “Oh My Days,” where he tells the story of finding love after extreme heartbreak. “‘Oh My Days’ is about talking yourself out of something that you know is making you happy because you’re frightened — and overcoming those fears, too,” he says.
Peck wanted to create music he wanted to hear, rather than focus on how he perceived others would react. “I was going back to references that I really liked when I was a teenager — there’s all these shoegaze-y, alternative moments on the album,” he says. “It allowed me to pivot to where I came from, having learned a lot of new things along the way.”
For “Appaloosa,” Peck teamed up with Noah Cyrus to chronicle his entry to Broadway in the song “Atchafalaya,” channeled his love of alt-rock in “Drift Away,” and told the story of a relationship in peril in “My Side of the Mountain.” “I think people were happily surprised that I was able to put out any music at all, and so, for it to be a very personal EP with songs I’m very proud of, I think people are very excited about it,” he says.
Through it all, Peck somehow trained, rehearsed, and filmed for the upcoming “Street Fighter” movie, where he plays Vega, a masked Spanish ninja with sharp claws and a haughty disposition. For weeks, he had a grueling routine of early-morning workouts at the gym, followed by two hours of martial arts training, and five or six hours at the recording studio, capped off with nightly “Cabaret” performances. “So, I was doing 16-hour days for about three weeks while I was living in New York to make this album.”
The final touch of 2025 was Orville Peck’s Rodeo, Peck’s seventh year of bringing lesser-known artists to the main stage. “We try to make the lineup as diverse and inclusive as possible — it’s hosted by drag queens,” he explains, noting the event’s massive support, with big sponsors and Live Nation as a partner. “It’s like a real thing now, and I’m very proud of it. It started off as just this idea I had, but it’s become something greater than that now, which is really cool to watch evolve.”
Life: A Passion Project
Despite life’s hardships, Peck finds joy with love, choosing hope through his music, advocacy, and self-honesty. He supports LGBTQ organizations like The Trevor Project, and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, an organization he holds dear given the terrible effect the AIDS epidemic has had in South Africa, his beloved birthplace.
“The most important thing I think that we can do sometimes is to try and carve out happiness where and how we can find it, especially in times when it is just so easy to get disheartened about what’s going on in the world,” he says of the “Appaloosa” closing song, “It’s the End of the World.” “This was my way of grabbing the person next to me and just saying, ‘You know? Eff it, let’s Thelma and Louise it and just try and find some happiness in all of this despair.’”
Peck has nearly finished writing his next full-length album, yet the finish line remains in the distance. He aspires for more acting roles, a part of him he is rediscovering and embracing. His world is in constant forward motion with no signs of slowing. “I think it might be some form of mental illness,” he says jokingly, “but we’re figuring it out.”