Is Bon Iver auditioning his successor Willy Wonka-style?

Fame is hell. That sentiment has been the number one theme of the popular music scene in 2024, from Tyler, the Creator casting Ayo Edebiri as a crazed stalker in his “NOID” video to the Eras tour being shut down due to terrorist threats to Charli xcx releasing an entire brat follow-up grappling with the impact of the first one to, of course, all the discourse surrounding Chappell Roan. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver joined the conversation earlier this month with SABLE,—his first release in five years—which saw the artist stripping away the “increasingly layered and elaborate touring and recording machine that Bon Iver became” to produce three intimate songs comprised (for the most part) of just his voice and an acoustic guitar.

Now, it seems he may want out in an even more fundamental way. In the album’s liner notes, the artist referred to the act of producing music under the Bon Iver name as “playing a part,” which it appears he meant 100%  literally. The artist launched a peculiar new site called “Counterpart” today, which sells itself as “a site documenting creative expression with and as Bon Iver” but seems more like a golden ticket to compete to become Bon Iver himself. “Who else could embody the role of Bon Iver?” the sparse homepage asks, above a video of singer-songwriter Sam Amidon trying his damnedest to do just that. Other prompts, written in Vernon’s typically verbose version of the English language, include “Could the essence of a song lie outside the voice that first sang it?,” “If a song is a vessel, who else might fill it?,” and finally, “Do you have a friend that resembles Justin Vernon?” 

It feels like “huh?” might be the only appropriate reaction at this time. When this writer saw the comma in SABLE,‘s title, she assumed it meant the three songs would soon become a full-length, unplugged LP, not a potential passing of the torch-esque philosophical experiment to make the whole thing even more meta. What are the criteria for becoming Bon Iver? Is it the physical resemblance or the musical talent? If it’s not even you but your friend that has to look like Vernon to nab the gig, are there going to be multiple Bon Ivers? How many layers are there to this thing? Does it involve chocolate rivers and everlasting gobstoppers? The whole thing has a real break-your-brain quality to it, but one thing is for sure: Vernon may have sung “Why do things gotta change?” in the final track on the album, but some things never do.

You can throw your hat in the ring—if you dare—on Counterpart’s “SUB , MIT” page here.