Born on June 5: Laurie Anderson, "O Super(wo)man".

For almost half a century, this firecracker-haired American born in Glen Ellyn near Chicago, Illinois, in 1947 has made a mockery of convention and cliché.

It's not easy to find some semblance of unanimity on the creator of "O Superman", the most unlikely hit of the last century... But everyone will at least agree on one point. Laurie Anderson plays a strange and fascinating music that sounds as much like rock as the New Testament sung by a La Scala baritone. One thing is certain: with the soon-to-be octogenarian darling of the New York "avant-garde", the boundaries between genres are breaking down. For better, and sometimes for worse...

As a teenager, Laurie Anderson plunged into the murky waters of "Performance for the Grandeur of Art". Quite a program! The judicious use of a few capital letters tells you immediately about the high emotional power of her tinkerings for academics with hypertrophied brains. Not content with just learning to play the violin, little Laurie enjoys collecting diplomas in sculpture and Egyptian architecture, just as others collect Pokémons. Each to their own.

In 1973, the skeletal American with the crazy hair even began performing in the most prestigious museums and at a handful of festivals promoting art in all its forms, often the most arduous of course. During this period, Belgium twice played host to Laurie's heterogeneous capharnaüm. Her clever cocktail of didactic slides, Super 8 films, amateur mime and "musical noises" put off the average person as surely as a government announcement at dinnertime, while others went into raptures.

And then, in 1981, the whole world succumbed to the haunting melody of "O Superman" and the haunting "Ah ah ah ah ah ah" that enveloped it chorus. Delighted by the bargain, the general public adds the words "minimalist" and "avant-garde" to its vocabulary. It boasts the complete (and indeed plethoric) discography of John Cage and Pierre Boulez. Sensing the wind was blowing, the multinational Warner bought the rights to the record from the microscopic One Ten Records label, giving itself unhoped-for artistic credibility. The machine was launched. It stopped first with the "Big Science" album, then with the seven-hour "United States" show, the "Home Of The Brave" film shoot and a first world tour like the rock stars! That was in 1986.

Since that first tidal wave on the frontiers of music and theater, Laurie Anderson has steered her ship carefully between the pitfalls of dry intellectualism. She innovates with tact, but retains a visceral attachment to performance. A bittersweet philosopher, the artist dissects the vagaries of modern life in each of her shows. She readily uses the latest visual techniques, lasers and video projections, to shake us out of our torpor. Like Henri Rollins, the tattooed heavyweight of hardcore, she also makes strange forays into the world of spoken word. "The Ugly One With The Jewels And Other Stories" blends sound effects, percussion, declamatory litanies and interventions by underground jazzmen. For"Bright Red" (1994), her first album of songs after 5 years of retirement, she favored a sonic alchemy, entrusted to Brian Eno, built around abruptly accessible refrains. Backed by Marc Ribot and Lou Reed (once her partner), she once again enjoyed blowing hot and cold.

In August 2024, after another 10-year recording hiatus, she released "Amelia", a concept album telling the story of American aviatrix Amelia Farhart, or more precisely, the 44 days of her life before her plane disappeared over the Pacific in 1937.

Photo: Laurie Anderson at the Teater Carré in Amsterdam (Netherlands), May 9, 1986