Laurie Anderson on Why Amelia Earhart’s Story Is ‘Super Timely’ and Crafting a ‘Doomsday Comedy’ About ‘The Empire Falling’

Earlier this summer, avant-garde musical pioneer Laurie Anderson stopped by Billboard’s first-ever Indie Power Players event at the Soho Grand Hotel in Manhattan to accept the Indie Icon Award. When I bring it up to her over Zoom a few weeks later, Anderson laughs off the idea of being hailed as one of the GOATs. “That was a little embarrassing – or a lot embarrassing,” she demurs. “Yeah. Icon. But you know, it’s flattering. It was sweet.”

She’s clearly retained some of that Midwestern humility from her childhood in the suburbs of Chicago. But if Laurie Anderson isn’t an indie icon, then who is? After making waves in the New York City art scene since the ‘70s, she brought her uncompromising, idiosyncratic vision to one of the major labels, Warner. Bros., with 1982’s Big Science. A heady, funky mélange of minimalism, electronica and art-pop, the trailblazing classic enjoyed improbable crossover success thanks in large part to its single “O Superman (For Massenet),” which became a No. 2 hit in the U.K. Over the ensuing decades, Anderson has become an influential force in exploring the ways music, technology and performance art intersect. Plus, she’s done everything from voicing a Rugrat to directing films to winning a Grammy.

The lattermost came thanks to Landfall, her 2018 album with the Kronos Quartet. On Friday (Aug. 30), Anderson returns with Amelia, a Nonesuch release that delves into legendary aviator Amelia Earhart’s ill-fated final flight. But while questions such as “what really happened to Amelia Earhart?” and “where did her plane crash?” have recurred throughout popular culture for nearly 90 years, Amelia isn’t interested in answers, or even asking questions. Instead, Anderson – through her indelible mixture of storytelling, sing-speak and dizzying soundscapes – takes us into the cockpit with Earhart throughout the course of her flight, drawing on flight logs, diary entries and contemporary interviews to give a sense of the frightening vastness of the ocean, the thrill and loneliness of exploration and the othering of female pilots in the 1930s. Like much of her work, it’s soothing, unsettling and thought-provoking.

“They called her Lady Lindy, they didn’t even take her seriously,” Anderson says. “But she was doing this really dangerous thing. She was very hands on, unlike Charles Lindbergh, who was a white gloves pilot in many ways. She really was working with the guys under the hood.” It’s that element of Earhart’s life that makes her story feel “super timely” to Anderson, who notes that “girls still aren’t really encouraged to do engineering” nearly 100 years later.

Below, Anderson walks Billboard through this project’s roundabout gestation, why collaborator ANOHNI is perfect “for every project” and her work on a “doomsday comedy” that will serve as Part V to her groundbreaking magnum opus from 1983, United States Live.

When you arrived at Billboard’s Indie Power Players event in June, you gave a surprise performance with this little handmade electronic device in your mouth. How long does it take you to make something like that?

Oh, you know, it’s sorts of time depending on what you’re making. I’m making a few things now for a big show in the fall. Right now, the project that I’m doing called ARK is mind-boggling. There are so many pieces to it that it’s just weird.

What’s ARK?

ARK is a big thing with music pictures and electronics on a stage in a big theater [Factory International] in Manchester, which is going to open in the fall [Nov. 12-24]. And it’s something about the end of the world.

I mean, we could be facing that soon.

Well, it’s kind of in the back of people’s minds. And I really like what’s in the back of people’s minds. It influences you even though you’re not necessarily talking about it. So that’s why I wanted to do that. It’s also — it sounds really stupid — but it’s like a doomsday comedy.

How else does one approach doomsday?

Exactly. That’s what I think. Yeah, yeah.

So Amelia is your new album, but I gather you’ve done this piece before – in 2000 at Carnegie Hall.

That was its distant cousin, let’s say. That was a very long time ago. Those pieces don’t really sound like each other at all. That was something that I was commissioned to do for Carnegie Hall, and then it was kind of horrible, actually. Really. It’s really pretty bad. So I stopped working on it. Then a few years later, the conductor [Dennis Russell Davies] said, “You know, I really liked that piece.” And I said, “You did?!” He said, “Yeah, let’s just do it for string orchestra.” So we did and it sounded pretty cool. Then, in the pandemic, he got back to me again and said, “Let’s record that.” And I really like this conductor a lot. He’s really supportive and cool. So we recorded it, and then I thought, “Okay, I’m gonna put some other stuff on top of this.” And that’s what this record is.

So did Carnegie Hall specifically commission it to be about Amelia Earhart, or was that your choice?

No, they just wanted something about flight, so I chose Amelia. I really got very fond of her working on it. She was she always talking to women — she was like the original blogger, first of all. She was talking to reporters at every stop, she would send telegrams at every stop, and she would write in her pilot’s log and in her diary. She was very conscious of her public. She also married her press agent, which tells you a lot. What I liked the most about her was she said, “You know, if I survive this trip” — and she wasn’t sure if she would — she said, “I want to start shop for girls.” At that point, boys in school took shop, which was like engines and motors and metal and woodworking, and girls took cooking and cleaning. I was like, “Whoa, that’s very cool.” She said, “Girls should find out how engines work, too.” She didn’t live to make that happen. But it was I was very impressed with that because her plane crashed like 87 years ago, on July 2 [1937], and you look at what’s going on now: Girls still aren’t really encouraged to do engineering or government, medicine, politics. It’s just kind of weird that women haven’t made more progress, I think. So anyway, that was an important story to hear now.

It’s timely.

Super timely, especially when we virtually just elected a president who kind of thinks women are stupid. It’s crucial to look at people who did really amazing things. And she was a great pilot. People were very patronizing when she was doing it: they called her Lady Lindy, they didn’t even take her seriously. But she was doing this really dangerous thing. She was very hands on, unlike Charles Lindbergh, who was a white gloves pilot in many ways. She really was working with the guys under the hood. And I really admire that about her. People are always asking me, “How do you work with technology?” And it’s not like it’s so amazing. It’s still [seen as] weird for women to be working with technology.

I hadn’t heard she was called Lady Lindy ‘til I listened to the album. That’s doubly a shame, since he was a racist.

He’s a pretty odd character. And pretty, I think, horrendous in the end. Just a really scary, weird guy. And what a story that he actually killed his son – did you go for that story?

The baby thing?

Yeah, the baby thing and trying to get the organs for his sister. I was like, “Whoa, that’s the weirdest story ever.”

That dovetails a bit with something I wanted to ask. Like the Lindbergh baby, people are still coming up with theories and evidence about the Earhart crash. Not that long ago, someone said they might have found her plane. Did that ever make you think, “hmm, maybe I should address this in the project?”

Oh, no, no. I think some of those are sort of credible but most of them aren’t really. They’re pretty iffy. The very last one? Maybe. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter to me.

After immersing yourself in her world and travels, do you ever get the urge to visit some of these places – Howland Island, New Guinea – for research? Or have you?

If I could go anywhere, I’d go to the Galapagos. Just to see what that would feel like. But no, I never really felt like going to look for her plane. I’d rather write about certain things than go there. Although that’s not to say that wouldn’t be really, really fun to do.

The album features guest vocals from one of my favorite singers, ANOHNI. What was it about ANOHNI that made her make sense for this project?

She makes sense for every project. I just love her singing. I got to hear her new show a couple weeks ago. So beautiful. I’m just a complete fan. She’s singing in ARK as well; she’s singing the part of the Buddha. It’s so inspiring to work with her.

So Amelia is a “distant cousin” of something you started in 2000. Last year, I saw you perform your Let X=X show at BAM in Brooklyn, and it was absolutely incredible. Similarly, that found you revisiting some of your older work, with Sexmob as your backing band. When you revisit this material, how do you balance the urge to tinker with it and make it different, as opposed to staying true to the spirit of the original piece?

Really good question, because that’s something I’m doing in this project called ARK now, which is subtitled The United States Part V. It’s basically what I see as the empire falling, in a way. But you never know; there are complex ways that things fall apart and then come back into shape, so you never know. There are a couple of things that refer to earlier pieces. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who’s going to notice that but sometimes other people do. It’s a wild project to be doing. But anyway, with Amelia I was very happy with how the orchestra seemed to be almost the ocean in it or the wind. It had this wildness to it that was really fun to work with. I did this backwards, actually. I did the orchestra and then I did drum and bass overdubs. Which is crazy. Tony Scherr, the bass player, I just said, “I want you to improv over the whole thing.” I didn’t play it for him [before]. He just did his part live. He’s an incredible player and he did some really intuitive things. It felt very spontaneous. I loved what he did.

When you’re working on these things, are you a one-take, two-take person, or do you obsess over tweaks and changes?

One hundred percent obsession. It goes on forever. It’s never right. Oh yeah. I love it. I love sitting in the studio and sampling things and playing around and that’s kind of how I put it together. Just a long time alone in the studio. It’s a lot of fun for me to do it like that.

After having a seven-album deal with Warner Bros. back in the day, you’ve been with Nonesuch for a while. Being on an indie must jibe well with your tendency to take your time, as opposed to being forced to hit deadlines to deliver albums.

That’s probably true. Although they didn’t bother me about that at Warner. They didn’t say, “Crank them out, come on!” The time I was [at Warner] there were some real music lovers, and they were just really interested in what I was doing. And at Nonesuch, I feel the same. For me, it depends more on the people than on the actual label. So I didn’t really feel that kind of pressure.

You’ve done a number of performance pieces that haven’t made it to a recording studio. I’m thinking of your 1999 piece Songs and Stories From Moby-Dick. I’ve always been curious, do you ever think about going back to those pieces and making a proper document of it on an album?

No, I don’t. I want to move forward. If there’s a point in incorporating it into anything then I would, but not just to go back and set the record straight.