Music of the Day, 12 January 2024

your electronic arms

My exploration of more of Laurie Anderson’s music last month is directly responsible for today’s MotD. Even though it was released as a single in 1981, I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear it until December, when I searched her name on YouTube and randomly selected songs whose titles intrigued me. I stopped after listening to this one.

If you’ve even minimally kept up with current news, you’ve almost certainly guessed why “O Superman” came to mind. As this space is devoted to music rather than geopolitics, the former will be my focus. As to the latter, I’ll only say one thing: Damn, Anderson does not play.

The song is alternately titled “O Superman (For Massenet),” because the first lines of it are slightly modified from an aria in Jules Massenet’s opera Le Cid. Other references should be easier for Americans to spot; some will recognize a similar construction to part of the Tao Te Ching in Anderson’s lines beginning “‘Cause when love is gone, there’s always justice” toward the end of “O Superman.”

When I first heard it, I think I listened five or six times in a row. I was captivated by the music originally, at least until I got to the end and realized I needed to invest more attention in the lyrics. With headphones on, more deft musical touches were revealed. And the video is equally compelling. The understated, somewhat discordant music and simple movements add to the ominous lyrics, delivered primarily through layers of Anderson’s vocoder-altered voice. The eerie harmonies are, again, almost discordant yet electronically luscious, if that makes any sense. A comment on this video describes it as a “wrenching quiet apocalypse.” I can’t put it any better than that.

“O Superman” was not a hit in the US,¹ but it was quite successful in several European countries and a few other English-speaking nations. It brought Laurie Anderson her first commercial success, which led to a contract with Warner Records. The company released her debut album, 1982’s Big Science, with this song on it.

It’s dismaying to me that “O Superman” has become so relevant yet again… but sadly, not surprising.

1. what an enormous surprise, I know