{"id":374626,"date":"2025-08-26T09:54:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T09:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/374626\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T09:54:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T09:54:14","slug":"did-laurie-anderson-have-the-most-avant-garde-hit-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/374626\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Laurie Anderson have the most avant-garde hit ever?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"O<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still \/ Album Cover)<\/p>\n

Tue 26 August 2025 8:00, UK <\/p>\n

Whenever you go into a sort of strange, liminal, dissociative state, it usually takes a while to realise just how unsettling it is. <\/p>\n

Or maybe it doesn\u2019t, but perhaps it takes a while to realise why it feels that way. When Laurie Anderson<\/a> created \u2018O Superman\u2019, she captured this feeling with \u201cjuxtaposed sinister and mundane imagery\u201d.<\/p>\n

Most people, when they listen to the song, are struck immediately by how uneasy it makes them feel. It\u2019s easy to see why \u2013 anyone who listens to the track and gains comfort from it probably has a thing for dark, abstract music that places them in a strange state of contemplation. But the thing with \u2018O Superman\u2019 isn\u2019t that it makes you think. In fact, it barely even does that. It\u2019s the fact that it\u2019s so strange and robotic and yet so slow and ambient that it captures a feeling we don\u2019t even have a name for. <\/p>\n

Before it was released, Anderson had already become something of a name in the art world because of her avant-garde work, specifically with the success of Duets on Ice. It was a strange concept, even by today\u2019s standards, involving Anderson playing a violin (which she called a \u201cventriloquist\u2019s dummy\u201d) while wearing ice skates frozen in ice. She stopped playing when the ice melted. It was working with her friend, B. George, that pushed \u2018O Superman\u2019 into her lap, and even then, it took a while before it actually started to get radio play (not so surprisingly).<\/p>\n

But perhaps even more surprising was that it wasn\u2019t supposed to be a charting hit to begin with. At the time, it was sharing the same space as hits like \u2018Kids in America\u2019 and \u2018Girls on Film\u2019, a misplaced gem that seemed to be there by complete accident. A surprise hit that only caught on because of an unexpected endorsement from John Peel, \u2018O Superman\u2019 wasn\u2019t like any other catchy commercial tune; it didn\u2019t have a familiar verse structure, or a chorus, or any other formatting features littered all across the charts. <\/p>\n

It starts with a string of disorienting \u201cha, ha, has\u201d looped through an Eventide Harmoniser, with strange, cryptic lyrics that add to this strange sense of foreboding. \u201cHello? This is your Mother \/ Are you there? \/ Are you coming home?\u201d Anderson says. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve got a message to give to you \/ Here come the planes.\u201d Rather like a one-sided exchange where there is no receiver, at least, not at this current moment in time, it feels strange and dystopian because it lingers there \u2013 that mindless lamentation where nothing feels entirely real.<\/p>\n

Most claim this to be the song that birthed modern, dissociative music, and it\u2019s easy to see why. In fact, researchers<\/a> have actually looked into the impact of songs like \u2018O Superman\u2019 on the listener, and how Anderson created a sound that felt like those strange, trance-like corners of our mind where that almost frozen state of contemplation comes from the two opposing forces of \u201csinister and mundane imagery\u201d. <\/p>\n

But while a lot of this impact comes from being detached from it, or from not knowing what the song actually means, it also feels as spine-tingling as it does because of its origin. We know from the lyrics that Anderson is talking about something dark. She even said so herself when it came to discussing its initial inspiration. But specifically, it was sparked by the Iran hostage crisis, carrying with it a disturbing message about war, violence and the perils of technology: a theme that still haunts us today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were left with dead bodies, a pile of burning debris, and the hostages nowhere to be seen,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I thought I\u2019d write a song about all that and the failure of technology.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still \/ Album Cover) Tue 26 August 2025 8:00, UK Whenever you go…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,1039,130971,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-374626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-homepage","10":"tag-laurie-anderson","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115094465101305299","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}