favorite line in O SUPERMAN by laurie anderson

which line is nearest the end

Mom line

"There's always Mom...Hi Mom!"

well, you don't know me.

but i know you.

Isolating many of these lines just reminds me why I found this song so effing creepy when I first encountered it at 15.

flappy bird if you appreciate this song, you'd really appreciate the title track "big science" too

And the voice said: Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds
'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice. And when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!

xp yea i need to listen to The Big Science! i don't know why i haven't yet. waiting to find it in a record store??? or just can't stop listening to O Superman

"When love is gone..." etc plays with a verse from the Tao teh ching which adds to the sense of womb retreat or sinking into loss of will for me.

But "your petrochemical arms" is the 3 words I find most euphonious.

"Here come the planes" is this amazing bleak elation tho. None of this piece is reducible to the semantic content of the words. It's all about the modulation

Probably top ten for me too. When I was a kid (why did I watch this video over and over as a kid) I thought she was saying "O George" and I wondered who George was so I'll vote for that.

I think about this song a lot.

Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you coming home?

lol old people confused by technology.

This is my favourite song, so it's impossible to choose. Every line gives me goosebumps like nothing else

Seriously, such a hard decision but I went with

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.

Just kind of sums up the submissive context of hyper-capitalist politics but also the womb-like feel of the song, like I want to be enveloped in its amniotic sound and its insidious undertones

Probably top ten for me too. When I was a kid (why did I watch this video over and over as a kid) I thought she was saying "O George" and I wondered who George was so I'll vote for that.

― orifex, Thursday, February 22, 2018 8:24 AM (fifty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My mum always used to think it was 'Oh John'

Noodle Vague OTM upthread. Some great posts all round.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPBR5UmYLls

Ô Souverain, ô Juge, ô Père - Jonas Kaufmann

electronic arms

O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.

One of those songs where I get so absorbed that the lyrics become less literal and just become part of the music.

Cat Power's "Colors and the Kids" is another song like this for me.

There was a rough time in my life a few years ago where I would play this over and over and over at work and on the way to and from work. Operated as some kind of melancholic Xanax. One of my favorite songs of all time.

How is Imagine a weird pop hit? Not being facetious. Like if you say O Superman is one of the weirdest pop hits ever that makes instant sense for me but Imagine sounds like a standard, straightforward piano ballad.

OTM.

I know this is slightly off topic, but the album she's just done with the Kronos Quartet is excellent.

xp to self

Remembering that stretch, I would alternate Smog's Permanent Smile with O Superman. Seemed to fulfill a similar function and speak to a kind of resignation from a different angle.

Your petrochemical arms is a phrase for the ages.

i put this song in a mental category of artists/songs that i heard about for a long time before i actually listened to them, and then when i finally listened, i felt dumb for having waited so long because they are so perfect. it's a pretty small group but along with "o superman" (and big science as a whole), i put "hammond song" by the roches and "the downtown lights" by the blue nile in there too.

ha! I'd put Hammond ?Song on a similar pedestal too, funnily enough although I discovered it a lot more recently.

i didn't really listen to that blue nile album until like two months ago. it's reassuring in a way to be in my late 30s and know that there's still tons of amazing music that i haven't heard yet, even from within my lifetime.

it's reassuring in a way to be in my late 30s and know that there's still tons of amazing music that i haven't heard yet, even from within my lifetime.

yes. it's so beautiful

Congratulations, NA, you're now me at 14. The next 14 years are sweet and then it all goes to hell.

The hold me mom line is my favourite cuz it offers a bit of false hope

hey man congrats on having heard every good song by the time you were 14

it's the resignation & lack of other options that make that line (and the song) so uniquely moving and creepy. you're in the arms of Mom whether you like it or not, unless you go and live off the grid or move to a country not ruled by the military industrial complex

xp

"Here come the planes" is the line that comes to mind when I think of this song. Agree on its greatness and its austere strangeness. Years later it still seems like this glittering ominous monument.

Man this song is weird. Wikipedia says this song is about Operation Eagle Claw, but damn if I can figure that out.

A few years ago I visited an exhibition on Postmodernism, at the V&A in London iirc, they had a nice dark room with seating where you could watch the video on a loop, it was perfect.

"judge"? It'll always be "Johnnie" to me.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djyusgCuUiI

Love this thread, it has pointed me back to United States Live, which is sprawling and brilliant, I need this in my life more often.

/Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you coming home?/

lol old people confused by technology.

Yes!

lmao

whaaaaaaat's the deaaaal with Mom? she's got a lot of arms!

otm. I met this guy...

flappy bird have you heard “The Big Top”?

My friend hates this song. Probably should disown him

"NOW OPEN THEM!!!"

Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you coming home? Hello, is anybody home?

Every December 24th, this happens.

flappy bird have you heard “The Big Top”?

― JoeStork, Friday, February 23, 2018 12:12 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i listened to most of United States for the first time last night. honestly having a hard time connecting with a lot her work, so much of it is interesting social commentary & performance art but none of it - yet, ime - coheres into the triumph of form & function & emotional wallop of O Superman. Mister Heartbreak is great but that's much more of a pop record (relatively speaking).

But I need to listen more...

honestly i haven't been able to really get into laurie anderson much beyond big science (though i enjoy the home of the brave soundtrack too)

Sharkey's Day tho

Flappy try another day in America. It's pretty sublime. My favourite Anderson records are strange angels, big science and homeland

^^^ those plus USL are the core imo

wins otm re: standup, particularly acute when live obv. a fave clip of her doing "mach 20" on tv:

https://youtu.be/SirOxIeuNDE

def someone doing a "routine" there, Voice of Authority and sperm projection and wiggly beat or no. (and the track is well-chosen bc it is the one of the most like a joke, building just like one before trailing off into disquieting wonder instead of ever quite punching.)

the 90s mostly-spoken stuff can be gorgeously dark tho, "same time tomorrow", the one where she remembers where she came from it had burning buildings and a fiery red sea, the title track on "the ugly one with the jewels" (is this like... true at all? never checked.) drearier listens but full of key moments

Oh yeah heart of a dog is also essential

i have tried several of her other albums and i don't connect to them. i don't hate them, and oddly none of them are super different from big science, but they're just not for me.

animal collective owe laurie some of that my girls money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaBbHGKLp88

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zol2MJf6XNE

ok who is this really?

^also part of a famous standup comedy routine! (B*ll C*sby's Noah bit)

It would be pretty difficult for me to pick one single favorite from 1981 (or even a few dozen, really). But if I absolutely had to, 'O Superman' might be the one.

Flappy Bird, if you haven't proceeded to 'Big Science' yet--you really need to. 'o Superman' is the high point, sure, but it's really a rather amazing album--writing, performance, production, coherence--that things like 'US Live' or 'Strange Angels' or 'Mister Heartbreak' (much as I love those) barely suggest.

i listened to this on the way to work this morning and started crying

https://media.giphy.com/media/14ouOwZDPad0Na/giphy.gif

hi mom

One of the things I love about US/BS is that a lot of it is this haunting/sinister/whatever take on what is essentially 80s brick wall standup. You seen these answering machines they have now? You know when you're on a plane and the captain comes on and says
― scotti pruitti (wins), Friday, February 23, 2018 5:03 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was thinking that Talking Heads sometimes have this kind of new wave + performance art + stand-up comedy vibe as well - I always thought the song titles for Fear Of Music looked like the track listing for a stand-up LP where the track titles are the subjects of the various 'bits'

So true, trying to think who would be a good fit, my vote would be Mitch Hedberg.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Soref - you seen the fred armisen talking heads mockumentary? Sounds like it’s up your alley

for posterity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk_-fLpmM4E

^ Laurie Anderson performing O Superman in NYC one week after 9/11. I didn't hear this song for the first time until late last year and I'm glad that my memories & associations with it aren't burdened or changed in the ways it was changed almost everyone that had heard it before 2001.

It's gotta be petrochemical arms, but the whole thing is a masterpiece.

weird timing with this poll ending today. all i can think about is Wag the Dog, Eisenhower's farewell address, and this song. how she captured - in sound - the feeling of living in the powerful country on earth, stuck in a never-ending war that we never see, or we can choose not to see or think about. nabisco otm so many years ago about how this song changes our perception of time, and it just doesn't sound womblike, it is a womb, comforting & hypnotic & dark & soothing but with something so sinister barely audible past the song's horizon, until the very end.

*most powerful

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

missed this poll. would have had a damned hard time choosing anyway. amazing song. "so hold me, mom" for emotional punch, maybe.

heartened that every line got at least 2 votes

Fewer lines than you might think for an eight minute track. Admittedly there are musical breaks..

this is one of my favorite songs but i didn't vote in this bc separating out the lyrics of this song doesn't make sense to me. i will say that "so hold me mom in your long arms" feels like the emotional release of the song, though it also has to do with the way the music shifts under that line.