Laurie Anderson - O Superman

I first heard this song in the Women, Gender and Music course I took at Dal when I was going to King's.

The class was, if I remember correctly, in the Dalhousie Arts Centre——the same building that is home to the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium. The room our class was in had a pretty decent sound system, a projector and a large screen at the front of the room. We watched the video (included below——I highly recommend watching it in its entirety) and i sat stunned, silent, awed. From that first note straight through to the end. And every time I've listened to it since then, it's still really resonated with me. It's a powerful, moving piece of music. And a wonderful experiment, too.

Anderson was quite a pioneer with the whole electronic music thing, invented some cool things, including "a tape-bow violin that uses recorded magnetic tape on the bow instead of horsehair and a magnetic tape head in the bridge." (stolen from the Wikipedia article about her) She uses that on, among other things, the United States Live 5LP set that I'm slowly working my way through. She was all about using pitch-bending effects to alter her voice, to present the entire spectrum of range for the human voice through just one person. Things like that. She had Things to say, too. And would not, from what little I know, hold back. Sort of an inspirational person, really.

This song is totally one of my favourites. And I don't mean one of my favourite Laurie Anderson songs (although that is also true), but just one of my Favourite Songs. For real.