Laurie Anderson

After briefly entering the mainstream pop radar in 1981 with her lone hit "O Superman," musician, composer, performance artist, and technology buff Laurie Anderson has enjoyed a public visibility greater than virtually any other avant-garde figure of her era. Her infrequent forays into rock aside, Anderson nevertheless remained firmly grounded within the realm of performance art, her ambitious multimedia projects encompassing not only music but film, visual projections, dance, and -- most importantly -- spoken and written language, the cornerstone of all of her work. Her recorded catalog offers combinations of (often electronically manipulated) spoken word, postmodern classical minimalism, vanguard rock, airy jazz, and ambient music.