Line #6 Music/LaurieAnderson


1	[[quoteright:283:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/151019_r27157_862.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:283: O Franchise/{{Superman}}. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad...]]
3
4	[floatboxright: Influences/collaborators: Creator/AndyKaufman, Creator/WilliamSBurroughs, Music/BrianEno, Music/PeterGabriel, Music/LouReed, Music/JeanMichelJarre]
5
6	->''"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much much better."''
7	-->-- '''Laurie Anderson''', "Language Is a Virus"
8
9	'''Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson''' (born June 5, 1947 in Glen Ellyn, IL) is an American musician, performance artist and composer who has been well known for her work in different fields of [[AvantGardeMusic the avant-garde]] since the early 1970s. She played in the Chicago Youth Symphony and trained as a {{sculptor\|s}}, and began doing performances in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s. While, understandably, not a "pop" artist, she is best known for her 1981 single, "O Superman," which hit Number 2 on the UK charts.
10
11	She befriended Creator/AndyKaufman in the late 1970s, and used to play the straight man in some of his routines, including being his opponent when he challenged women to wrestle him.
12
13	After dating Music/LouReed for 16 years, she was married to him from 2008 until his passing on October 27, 2013.
14
15	A couple things to note: one of her most well-known albums, 1983's ''United States Live'', was a truncated version of her prominent performance art show recorded over two nights in Brooklyn; it contains the live (pre-single) version of "O Superman" and runs for nearly ''four-and-a-half hours'' (edited down from the actual, full length live show - which was ''eight'' hours long). She's also made several shorts, as well as two feature films. First was a concert film called ''Home of the Brave'' in 1986. This was followed nearly 30 years later by the critically-acclaimed ''Heart of a Dog'' in 2015, a collage-like rumination on life, loss, and modern American surveillance shown mostly through the experiences of her beloved late rat terrier, Lolabelle. (The latter is available from Creator/TheCriterionCollection, spine #846.)
16	----
17	!!Discography:
18	* ''Big Science'' (1982)
19	* ''United States Live'' (1984)
20	* ''Mister Heartbreak'' (1984)
21	* ''Home of the Brave'' (1986)
22	* ''Strange Angels'' (1989)
23	* ''Bright Red'' (1994)
24	* ''The Ugly One With The Jewels'' (1995)
25	* ''Life on a String'' (2001)
26	* ''Homeland'' (2010)
27	* ''Landfall'' (2018)
28	* ''Songs From The Bardo'' (2019)
29
30	!!"These are the tropes, the tropes that take":
31	* AlbumClosure: ''Bright Red'' ends with a long SpokenWordInMusic piece called "Same Time Tomorrow" about endings and the cyclical nature of time.
32	* {{Bifauxnen}}: Resulting in a {{Gender Reveal}}. When Laurie first met William Burroughs, he started flirting with her thinking she was an androgynously pretty young man, until she explained she was a woman (a woman wearing a spiffy all-black tuxedo).
33	* BigApplesauce:
34	** "New York Social Life"
35	** Many of her other songs also deal with life in New York City where she's lived and worked most of her life. Following 9/11 she directed a segment of a film paying tribute to the city.
36	* BreakupSong: "Sweaters"
37	* TheCameo:
38	** She appeared on "This is the Picture (Excellent Birds)" on Music/PeterGabriel's ''Music/{{So}}'', which hit Number 2 on the ''Billboard'' Top 200 albums chart, making it her highest ever appearance on an American chart. (Gabriel performed on a version of the song that appeared on Anderson's album, ''Mister Heartbreak'', released two years before ''So''.)
39	** Provided a character voice for ''WesternAnimation/TheRugratsMovie''.
40	* TheCastShowOff: Composes, performs, invents her own instruments, hosts TV shows, directs, [[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002173/?ref_=fn_nm_nm_1 acts in movies]]...
41	* CheshireCatGrin: In "Difficult Listening Hour":
42	--> ''And he had this smile, And when he smiled he had these big white teeth. Like luxury hotels on the Florida coastline. And when he closed his mouth, It looked like a big scar. And I said to myself: Holy smokes!''
43	* ConcertFilm: ''Home of the Brave'', from 1986, which she directed herself.
44	* CoolShades: On the cover of ''Big Science'' and near the end of the film ''Home of the Brave''. Slightly averted in the former in that the shades have been painted white, rendering them non-functional as actual shades.
45	* DeadpanSnarker:
46	-->"You've probably heard that Microsoft has recently taken over the Catholic Church. The Vatican was pleased, saying, 'Well, we've been using icons for over 2000 years, and Microsoft has only been using them for 3, so we figure we'll be able to help them out a bit.'"
47	* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: From "O Superman":
48	-->"They're American planes, made in America."
49	** And from its B-Side "Walk The Dog":
50	-->"I saw a lot of trees today, and they were all made of...wood. Well they were wooden trees, and they were made, entirely...Of wood."
51	* {{Doorstopper}}: Her first live album (and only her second professional album), ''United States Live'', is ''five'' records long.
52	* {{Eagleland}}: Type 3. She loves the U.S. but is not shy about calling out those politicians (e.g., UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, longtime Sen. Jesse Helms [R-NC]) she dislikes.
53	* EinsteinHair: One of her most iconic trademarks. She cuts it herself.
54	* ElectronicMusic: It's her primary genre.
55	* GratuitousGerman: "Example #22" alternates between German and English.
56	* GreatestHitsAlbum: While making allowances in terms of the word ''hits'' given she only has a couple of actual chart hit singles to her name, ''Talk Normal: The Laurie Anderson Anthology''.
57	* LawOfChromaticSuperiority: "Beautiful Red Dress," ''Bright Red''
58	* LetXBeTheUnknown: "Let X=X"
59	* LiveAlbum: ''United States Live'' and ''Live in New York''[[note]]Recorded only a week after the 9/11 attacks.[[/note]]
60	* MediumAwareness: The beginning and end of ''United States Live'' contain the talkback of the live show stage manager on the in-house intercom circuit, calling lighting and sound cues, etc. The last words spoken on the album are the stage manager saying "And send 'em out, Bill," after which the audience erupts into applause (as, presumably, Anderson and musicians come onstage for their bows.)
61	* TheMovie: Her 1986 concert film, ''Home of the Brave.''
62	* MundaneMadeAwesome: "O Superman"'s lyrics are based around an answering machine message.
63	* NakedFirstImpression: "Say Hello" was accompanied in live performance by a picture of a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque Pioneer Plaque]], which were gold-adonised images of a naked man and woman (along with other symbols) that were affixed to the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft as a way of identifying to any extra-terrestrials life forms where the spacecraft came from. Anderson comments of the man's gesture (hand uplifted, palm out) that it's how humans say "Goodbye", but it's also how they say "Hello", so on our planet, "Hello" looks just like "Goodbye".
64	* NewSoundAlbum: ''Strange Angels'', which reviewers have commented seems to have been her interpretation of a straightforward pop album. She actually ''sings'' far more on this album than she does on any others (to the point of taking actual singing lessons during pre-production when she felt her skills were not up to par). Although unconventional, its sound is of a piece with the kinds of albums other artists like Music/PeterGabriel (with whom she had previously collaborated) were putting out in TheEighties. This "new sound" didn't really take and she went back in the direction of spoken word in her later career.
65	* NonAppearingTitle: "Ramon", "The Dream Before"
66	* OpaqueLenses: The white-painted glasses she wears on the cover of ''Big Science'' didn't just ''look '' opaque, they were genuinely so.
67	* OuijaBoard: "The Ouija Board"
68	* OurAngelsAreDifferent: "Strange Angels"
69	* PerformanceArtist: The RealLife straight female version, as, along with her music, she has presented various installations. Her concerts incorporate films and dances along with the music. One of her earliest performances, ''Automobile'' (1969), was a symphony performed on vehicle horns, and she first came to the public's attention by way of performances she'd give in which she'd play violin while wearing ice skates and standing on a block of ice; when the ice melted away, the performance ended.
70	* PowerMakesYourVoiceDeep: She often uses a voice filter to make her speaking voice sound like that of a deep-voiced man. She used to call it the "Voice of Authority" until Music/LouReed suggested he be called "Fenway Bergamot".
71	* PublicServiceAnnouncement: Instead of videos for the songs on ''Strange Angels,'' she made a series of "Personal Service Announcements."
72	* QuarrelingSong: "It Tango"
73	* RearrangeTheSong: Happened twice with "Excellent Birds". The first instance was for the song's music video, featuring a more elaborate, electro-funk instrumentation that de-emphasized some of the more overtly avant-garde elements of the album version (this version incidentally would debut on ''Good Morning, Mr. Orwell'' before the album version released). The second time was for its inclusion on co-writer and co-vocalist Music/PeterGabriel's 1986 album ''Music/{{So}}'', which took the music video version of the song and made it even denser, orienting it more in the direction of WorldMusic and featuring [[Music/{{Chic}} Nile Rodgers]] on rhythm guitar.
74	* RepurposedPopSong: "O Superman" was used in a commercial for [=HTC=] smartphones.
75	** "Sharkey's Day" was used by Creator/{{Lifetime}} as its theme music for a while.
76	* SesameStreetCred: Voiced one of the newborn babies during a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment in ''WesternAnimation/TheRugratsMovie''.
77	* ShoutOut: "O Superman" itself is one to the aria "Ô souverain, ô juge, ô père" ("O sovereign, O judge, O father") from Jules Massenet's opera ''Le Cid''. Lampshaded in that the song's subtitle is "(For Massenet)".
78	* SillyLoveSongs: "Baby Doll", which hit Number 7 on the ''Billboard'' Modern Rock Charts, the highest she's ever hit on her own on an American chart. It's also one of the most mainstream songs in her canon.
79	* TheSomethingSong:
80	** "Three Walking Songs"
81	** "Three Songs for Paper, Film and Video"
82	** "City Song"
83	** "Telephone Song"
84	* SpokenWordInMusic: All the time. Although she sang occasionally, and her very first single from 1977 was fully musical, it wasn't until her 1989 album ''Strange Angels'' - the recording of which was reportedly delayed so that she could take proper singing lessons - that singing became a regular part of her performances. In recent years, however, she has tended to focus on spoken word more.
85	* StartMyOwn: Invented her own instruments, including the tape-bow violin and the talking stick.
86	* TheStoryteller: Once when asked to sum herself up in one word, she chose "Storyteller."
87	* TemptingFate: "Monkey's Paw"
88	* UncommonTime: One of her multimedia creations was "Film Song in 24/24 Time"
89	* {{Understatement}}: In "From the Air", as she learns that she's going to be making a crash landing, she says, "Uh-oh. This is gonna be some day!"
90	* YourCostumeNeedsWork: Discussed in the song "Talk Normal":
91	-->''I turned the corner in [=SoHo=] today,''
92	-->''And someone looked right at me and said, "Oh no,''

Context Music / LaurieAnderson