diff --git a/src/pip/_internal/utils/glibc.py b/src/pip/_internal/utils/glibc.py
index 81342afa447..134b20a7705 100644
--- a/src/pip/_internal/utils/glibc.py
+++ b/src/pip/_internal/utils/glibc.py
@@ -40,7 +40,20 @@ def glibc_version_string_ctypes() -> Optional[str]:
     # manpage says, "If filename is NULL, then the returned handle is for the
     # main program". This way we can let the linker do the work to figure out
     # which libc our process is actually using.
-    process_namespace = ctypes.CDLL(None)
+    #
+    # We must also handle the special case where the executable is not a
+    # dynamically linked executable. This can occur when using musl libc,
+    # for example. In this situation, dlopen() will error, leading to an
+    # OSError. Interestingly, at least in the case of musl, there is no
+    # errno set on the OSError. The single string argument used to construct
+    # OSError comes from libc itself and is therefore not portable to
+    # hard code here. In any case, failure to call dlopen() means we
+    # can proceed, so we bail on our attempt.
+    try:
+        process_namespace = ctypes.CDLL(None)
+    except OSError:
+        return None
+
     try:
         gnu_get_libc_version = process_namespace.gnu_get_libc_version
     except AttributeError: