Song of the Day 12/11: Laurie Anderson, “O Superman”

WXPN’s year-end countdown of the 885 Greatest Songs by Women – I know, the title sounds more ridiculous every time you hear it – reached my pick for No. 1 yesterday afternoon. “O Superman” clocked in at No. 262, between Phoebe Snow’s “Poetry Man” and Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces.”

I don’t know if that supports my voting strategy or not. The contest used ranked voting, with 10 points for first place, nine for second and so on, so I put “O Superman” first, partly because I thought other voters might overlook a 40-year-old, 8-minute avant-garde single, masterpiece or not. Given how high it finished, it might not have needed my help.

More than strategy was behind my choice, though. I was captivated the first time I heard Anderson’s debut album, “Big Science.” The LP was released in 1982, by which point she had been active in New York’s downtown arts scene for a decade. I’d heard plenty of experimental music, but most of it was sterile and intellectual. Anderson’s was, too, but it was also witty and smart-ass, and her sonic experiments could be hypnotic. It was the first avant-garde music I had heard that I was eager to hear again.

That I heard it at all was thanks to influential British DJ John Peel. His enthusiastic backing helped the song become a surprise hit in the UK, where it rose to No. 2 on the singles chart in 1981. The small label that released the record couldn’t keep up with demand, which led to Anderson signing a seven-record deal with Warner Brothers. The first was “Big Science,” composed of excerpts from her 8-hour audio-visual production “United States Live.”

Anderson has said the song, particularly the part about the “American planes” was inspired by the crash of a military rescue helicopter Jimmy Carter had dispatched in an attempt to rescue American hostages in Tehran.