postpunk:

The Top 35 Or So Songs of the 80’s

#25: Laurie Anderson - O Superman (For Massenet)

“O Superman” is an eight-minute performance-art piece that became a John Peel-boosted #2 fluke hit single in the UK. The music consists of the syllables “ha ha” repeated over and over, some saxophone and synth flourishes, a sample of birds chirping, and Laurie Anderson’s vocodered monologue. It was a total “novelty” single in the purist sense of the term, and there’s still something very novel and prescient about the song today. Indeed, upon wrapping up his nine-disc boxset of 1981 music, Ian at Musicophilia called the song “perhaps 1981’s most timeless and compelling contribution of all”. (Sidenote: I hope you’re recovering well and feeling better, Ian! This blog and this list owes a lot to you!)

What is it about this song that keeps it interesting today? An often cited example is the new-found resonance of the song’s “planes” following 9/11, but this is not quite a 9/11 song. How does Anderson’s impersonation of a mother on an answering machine still connect with us? You can point to the Information Age—“I’ve got a message for you” and “Okay, who is this really?”—and the fractured voices and masked quotations play into a theme of technological awe and apprehension; Devo and Talking Heads are kindred spirits in this respect. But the stakes here are much higher than mere information overload.

What gives me pause every time I hear this song are the “arms”: “So hold me, Mom, in your long arms, your petrochemical arms, your military arms, in your electronic arms”. Wikipedia cites an author who sees the arms of “O Superman” as an allusion to Massenet’s 1902 Le jongleur de Notre-Dame where a dying character is held by the Virgin Mary. A religious allegory strikes me as dubious, but the crisis for comfort is quite salient. Anderson herself says the song is a “cover” of an 1885 Massenet aria called “O Souverain, o juge, o père”. The original title translates to “O Sovereign, O Judge, O Father” but Anderson swaps “Sovereign” for Superman and “Father” for Mom and Dad. All of this information about Massenet was news to me this morning, but the details cohere nicely with what I find central to the song’s enduring “novelty”; namely, the increasing importance of a private, domestic space (Mom) in a society where technological and military might (Superman) out-runs, supersedes and even threatens our system of checks and balances, safe-guards and fail-safes (Judge):

‘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

As I said above, the anxiety here is not simple technophobia: Think Torture or #Iran, not spam or txtspeak.

This song is what I imagine would trickle in from hidden speakers on the day you finally learn how to levitate.