Avant-Garde Goes Mainstream in the 1980s?

It was not much of a stretch from most late 1970s/early 1980s rock to late 1970s/early 1980s new composition, esp. in NYC. The overlap just in terms of players and ideas and styles is overwhelming, and since that's what was going on, it shouldn't be surprising that SNL (which probably didn't have the booking power and/or cache circa '75-82 that it does now) featured a lot of these people. To Lorne Michaels, Laurie Anderson would probably seem a pretty safe alternative to Lydia Lunch.

Also you're overstating their popularity. How much did this stuff actually sell?

Excellent observation.

It was not much of a stretch from most late 1970s/early 1980s rock to late 1970s/early 1980s new composition, esp. in NYC. The overlap just in terms of players and ideas and styles is overwhelming,...

("People in Blue States be listenin' to world-beat!")

Also by the time Glass appeared on SNL in 1986, he was definitely not new news.

I don't exactly remember all of the details about how "O Superman" became a #2 hit in the UK -- but it's safe to say that Anderson didn't "go out and make a pop single" in the same way that, say, Jessica Simpson does. If memory serves, it was more like it unexpectedly found its way to radio. (Because, really, if she wanted to make something along the lines of a "radio-hit pop single," she probably could have, and it wouldn't have sounded like "O Superman.")

Norah Jones of 15 years ago = Tracy Chapman

Laurie Anderson has appeared on two major UK hit singles. She was one of the Various Artists who performed on the charity single 'Perfect Day' that topped the UK chart in 1997, delivering one line of the song written and first performed by her long-term personal partner Lou Reed. However, as a solo act she has had but one UK hit single. It reached number two in 1981. It was called 'O Superman', and it was surely one of the strangest records ever to climb the UK chart.

Like many a one-hit wonder, Anderson is not primarily a musical performer. But where other unlikely hits have come from comedians, actors or sportsmen, Anderson is a performance artist, specialising in multi-media shows that make use of film, spoken word, dance and innovative technology.

She originally recorded 'O Superman' for a New York-based indie label, 110 Records. It was as much a poem as a song, half-sung and half-spoken, with minimal conventional musical accompaniment - just some electronic tones and pulses, and splashes of sax and flute. Anderson's voice was distorted through a vocoder, making it androgynous and eerie. The single lasted for over eight minutes.

By all conventional criteria, 'O Superman' was totally uncommercial and radio-unfriendly - but it was weirdly gripping and moving. Its use of electronics seemed to evoke the difficulty of communicating emotionally through technology, and there was some startling wordplay: 'So hold me Mom/ In your long arms/ Your petrochemical arms/ Your military arms...'

There was also humour in 'O Superman'. Anderson's distorted voice calmly observed:

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 - Hi Mom!
However, the overall effect of the single was distinctly unsettling.

DJ John Peel began playing it on his BBC Radio One show, and got a huge response. Record shops all over the country received requests for it. Finally, WEA Records signed Anderson and released the single in Britain. It shot straight into the Top 20, climbed to number two, but then began descending the chart.

'O Superman' was, in fact, a small fragment of an epic four-and-a-half hour work entitled United States, all about communication and the way people use language. Anderson's debut album, Big Science (1982) consisted of excerpts from United States. A five-album boxed set containing a live recording of the whole work, simply entitled United States - Live, was released in 1984. On both albums, the song's title is listed as 'O Superman (For Massenet)' - probably a reference to Jules Massenet (1842-1912), an influential opera composer.

Although she has never had another solo hit single, Anderson has kept returning to the music world over the years and enjoyed some success in the album charts. She reached the US Billboard Hot 100 albums in 1984 with Mister Heartbreak, on which she worked with Peter Gabriel. More importantly, perhaps, the success of 'O Superman' won Anderson a much wider audience for her performance art, which continues to be appreciated to this day.

As far as Europe's concerned, I think the original punk scene was responsible for making a lot of people more receptive and responsive to a lot of different, more "avant" sounds (cf.: Alternative TV, Cabaret Voltaire, The Fall, Magazine, PiL, Swell Maps, Wire domestically and imported sounds from Devo, Pere Ubu, Suicide etc.); so when punk was subsequently reduced to a more narrow definition, people started to look elsewhere for that sort of imagination innovativeness.

1978 More Songs About Buildings And Food Pop Albums No. 29
1978 Talking Heads: 77 Pop Albums No. 97
1979 Fear Of Music Pop Albums No. 21
1980 Remain In Light Pop Albums No. 19
1982 The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads Pop Albums No. 31
1983 Speaking In Tongues The Billboard 200 No. 15
1983 Speaking In Tongues Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums No. 58
1983 Speaking In Tongues Pop Albums No. 15
1983 Speaking In Tongues Black Albums No. 55
1984 Speaking In Tongues The Billboard 200 No. 48
1984 Stop Making Sense The Billboard 200 No. 41
1985 Stop Making Sense The Billboard 200 No. 53
1985 Little Creatures The Billboard 200 No. 20
1987 "True Stories" The Billboard 200 No. 28
1988 Naked The Billboard 200 No. 19

probably just "Top R&B"

Song Title Peak Year
Heartbreak Hotel/ 5 1956
I Want You, I Need You, I Love You 10 1956
Don't Be Cruel/Hound Dog 1 1956
Love Me Tender/ 4 1956
Too Much 7 1957
All Shook Up 1 1957
(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear/ 1 1957
Jailhouse Rock/ 1 1957
Don't/I Beg of You 4 1957
Wear My Ring Around Your Neck 7 1958
Hard Headed Woman/Don't Ask Me Why 2 1958
One Night/ 10 1958
(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such As I/ 16 1959
A Big Hunk O' Love 10 1959
My Wish Came True 15 1959
Stuck On You/ 6 1960
It's Now or Never 7 1960
Are You Lonesome Tonight?/ 3 1960
I Feel So Bad 15 1961
She's Not you 13 1962
Return to Sender 5 1962
One Broken Heart for Sale 21 1963
(You're the) Devil in Disguise 9 1963
Boss Nova Baby 20 1963

I realize that Hall & Oates was a poor choice to cite as "strange" to be on the R&B charts. Because I would call them R&B, no question, and yet I still wouldn't call Talking Heads R&B. So whatevs.