“The one that haunts me”: Laurie Anderson’s favourite Brian Wilson song
Laurie Anderson has become one of the more unsuspecting gems that has influenced musical innovation in more ways than it seems. With a certain defiance best categorised by her ability to put some of life’s more abstract aspects into poetic words, Anderson challenged convention without straying too far into the abyss, instead approaching relatable experiences from a completely new angle.
On the subject of originality, it’s difficult to find anyone who comes as close to fitting that paradigm as Anderson. Even Bowie, who is considered by many to have torn up the rulebook and set music on a completely new path, regarded Anderson as the epitome of otherworldliness after hearing her eery tune ‘O Superman’. Despite its recent resurgence in popularity, the track captivated the ‘Starman’ with its haunting atmosphere, simultaneously inspiring and unsettling the creative within.
Emerging from New York’s 1970s avant-garde scene, Anderson has approached musical experimentation like a true architect, barely bothered by the emptiness of expectation and the vapidity of pandering to anything and everything surrounding her. Although unconventional, her music challenges the dynamic between music and technology, creating sounds that simultaneously feel intimate and distant.
For Bowie and countless others, Anderson’s detached style paradoxically pulls you in, satisfying the morbid curiosity while enlightening the ear to new sonic textures. Using ‘O Superman’ as an example once again, the song feels like floating away from the warm embers of earth into unknown territories filled with danger and intrigue as you hold on for nothing other than to figure out what lies afoot.
What’s perhaps most interesting about Anderson’s emergence and musical choices is her own influences. After all, what inspires experimental innovators who have little care for convention? In reality, Anderson has always enjoyed musical originators, from avant-garde backgrounds to the more commercial spaces. Her talent lies in her ability to mix up the pot, complete with knowledge about all those who came before.
For many, The Beach Boys—their hits, especially—were about as commercial-sounding as it got. However, there was a subtle flamboyance to their sound that likely sparked endearment from pioneers like Anderson, who enjoyed anything that stood out from the rest—colourful or not. In 1988, Brian Wilson asked for Anderson to come to his studio to give him some pointers on a new song he was working on, ‘Little Children’. He seemed stuck on a particular lyric or verse and needed the singer’s input.
Entering the studio, Anderson knew immediately how to enhance the track. “I said, ‘It’s a great image, the kids are going to school, they’re marching along, but do we have to say marching?” She recalled to The Line of Best Fit, continuing, “Because it’s Monday morning, and I don’t know that many kids who march on a Monday morning. No… what about if the kids are all little and wrinkled up? When little kids run for the bus, they still have the creases from their pillows on their faces, making their faces like little prunes. And maybe they’re scuttling towards the bus like old people?’ He said, ‘Let’s make it like that!'”
The song became Anderson’s favourite of Wilson’s because it opened up just the right amount of doubt to keep you enticed, with endless questions about some of its strange lyrics and music that sounded just the right amount of fun and nightmarish. For Anderson, the song had some of the most “beautiful lines” about “how resourceful” the children were, but some of the words still keep her on her toes. “What a great song,” she added, saying they had a lot of fun, even if the track “is the one that haunts me.”
