The album cover of Haunted
Poe (real name Annie Decatur Danielewski, 1967-) is an American singer-songwriter. She has released two albums to date, Hello (1995) and Haunted (2000).
Hello featured the modern rock radio hits "Angry Johnny", "Trigger Happy Jack" and "Hello". Haunted is by far the more notable of the two, despite being less successful commercially. The album is both a tribute to her late fathernote and a companion piece to her brother Mark's novel House of Leaves. Haunted's most successful single, "Hey Pretty", features Mark reading sections from House of Leaves in place of verses.
After 23 years of absence, she released the song "This Road" for the video game Alan Wake II.
Tropes associated with Poe include:
- All Women Are Prudes: The song "Not a Virgin" goes against this and slut shaming.
- Concept Album: Haunted.
- Creator Cameo: In the video game Apocalypse, she voices the second horseman, Plague, and her song "Control" plays in the background of her battle.
- Fading into the Next Song: More often than not in Haunted.
- Grief Song: "If You Were Here".
- Lyrical Dissonance: "Angry Johnny" actually sounds kind of sexy/romantic if you ignore the fact the lyrics are all about her discussing ways to kill him.
- Mercy Kill: One of the stanzas in "Angry Johnny" sounds like he's tormented and she is killing him to end his suffering.
- Murder Ballad: "Angry Johnny" is a long list of ways she could kill the title character, with the chorus always coming back to "but either way, I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna blow you away".
- Rearrange the Song: When the title track of Hello was released as a single, it was a completely different arrangement that basically changed the genre of the song from trip-hop to Alternative Rock - this was officially known as "Hello (Band Version)", and was also the way she tended to play the song live.
- Then there's the already-mentioned single version of "Hey Pretty": At the time, alternative rock radio was playing few female acts, so when the song was being promoted for radio play, it was found that many stations liked the song, but were reluctant to add it to rotation. Finally, one radio program director suggested Poe create "some crazy mix" of the song and he'd try playing it on air once to test listener reaction. In response, she came up with the idea of having Mark Z. Danielewski perform Spoken Word in Music over the verse sections because, technically, it would then have fewer female vocals. Since his novel House of Leaves was a best-seller at the time, his appearance drove interest in the song and gave Poe her fourth and last entry on the Billboard Alternative chart.
