Laura Phillips Anderson was born June 5, 1947, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, United States. She attended Mills College in California, and eventually graduated from Barnard College magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, studying art history. In 1972, she obtained an MFA in sculpture from Columbia University.
She performed in New York through the 1970s. Two early pieces, "New York Social Life" and "Time to Go," were included in the 1977 compilation New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media, along with works by Pauline Oliveros and others.
She became more widely known in 1982 with the single "O Superman," originally released in a limited quantity by One Ten Records; a sudden influx of orders from the U.K. (prompted by British DJ John Peel playing the record) led to Anderson signing with the Warner Brothers label, which re-released the single. "O Superman" reached number two on the national pop charts in Britain.
"O Superman" was part of a larger stage work entitled United States and was included on her following album, Big Science. Her more recent stage work includes a multimedia presentation inspired by Moby Dick. She starred in and directed the 1986 concert film, Home of the Brave, and also composed the soundtracks for the Spalding Gray films Swimming to Cambodia and Monster in a Box. All of Anderson's albums from the 1980s sold very well despite being labeled "avant garde". Her varied career has even included voice-acting in the animated film The Rugrats Movie. In 1994 she created a CD-ROM entitled Puppet Motel.
She wrote a supplemental article on the cultural character of New York City for the Encyclopædia Britannica and in the late 1980s hosted the PBS series, Alive from Off Center, for which she produced the short film, What You Mean We?.
One of the central themes in Anderson's work is exploring the effects of technology on human interrelationships and communication.
Anderson has collaborated with William Burroughs, Mitchell Froom, Arto Lindsay, Peter Gabriel, Perry Hoberman, David Sylvian, Jean Michel Jarre, Hector Zazou, Nona Hendryx, David Van Tieghem, and husband Lou Reed. She also worked with comedian Andy Kaufman in the late 1970s (with a romantic involvement hinted at in some of her spoken word performances about him).
Anderson, who rarely revisits older work (though themes and lyrics occasionally reappear) went on tour performing a selection of her best-known musical pieces in 2001. One of these performances was recorded in New York City only a week after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and included a performance of "O Superman". This concert was released in early 2002 as the double CD, Live in New York, which remains her most recent album release.
In 2003, Anderson became NASA's first and so far only artist-in-residence, which inspired her most recent performance piece, The End of the Moon.
Rumors emerged of a possible new album release in the fall of 2004, but this turned out to be false as Anderson seems too busy mounting a succession of themed shows, as well as composing a piece for Expo 2005 in Japan.
In February 2010, Laurie Anderson premiered a new theatrical work, entitled Delusion, at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. This piece was commissioned by the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad and the Barbican Centre, London.
In May/June 2010, Anderson curated the Vivid Sydney festival in Sydney, Australia together with Lou Reed
In late June 2010, with the production assistance of husband Lou Reed, as well as Roma Baran. Laurie Anderson released her first full length studio album in near a decade with that of: "Homeland" on Nonesuch Records. Receiving much critical acclaim, "Homeland" has been lauded by many as Anderson's crowning auditory achievement. A conglomerated assimilation of her many persona's, characters and decades work exploring and experimenting in a multitude of artistic mediums.
Also featured on the "Homeland" album are a number of famed collaborators, including John Zorn (saxophone on tracks 8 & 11), Kieran Hebden of "Four Tet" fame (keyboards on track 5), Antony Hegarty (vocals on track 4), Husband Lou Reed himself on some guitar, and Tuvan throat singers. At 66 minutes, it is also Anderson's longest studio album.
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Same Time Tomorrow
Laurie Anderson Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
T came from the factory. good morning. good night. same time tomorrow. we're in record. so here are the questions: is time long or is it wide? and the answers? sometimes the answers just come in
Mail. and one day you get that letter you've been waiting for forever. and everything it says is true. and then in the last line it says: burn this. we're in record. and what I really want to kn
: are things getting better or are they getting worse? can we start all over again? stop. pause. we're in record. good morning. good night. now I in you without a body move. and in our hearts we
Standby. good morning. good night.
The lyrics of Laurie Anderson's Same Time Tomorrow paint a picture of a mundane, everyday life where time is constant and unchanging. The song starts with the mention of a blinking clock on a VCR that is always set to twelve noon, depicting the repetitive nature of life. The line, "good morning. good night. same time tomorrow," highlights how the routine of life continues without change.
As the song progresses, Anderson poses philosophical questions, such as whether time is long or wide and if things are getting better or worse. The idea that answers to these questions might arrive in the form of a letter, and that the revelations contained within might be so profound that they require destruction, creates an air of mystery and intrigue.
The final lines, "now I in you without a body move. and in our hearts we standby. good morning. good night," suggest a sense of unity and interconnectedness within the human experience. Ultimately, Same Time Tomorrow is a reflection on the inevitability of routine and the potential for moments of revelation and connection amidst the familiar.
Line by Line Meaning
You know that little clock, the one on your vcr the one that's always blinking twelve noon because you never figured out how to get in there and change it?
You've got this one clock in your house that's broken and you can't be bothered to fix it. It's stuck at the same time, always wrong.
so it's always the same time just the T came from the factory.
The time never changes, it's always the same. It's just that the clock was made this way, so it's not your fault that it's broken.
good morning. good night. same time tomorrow. we're in record.
Every day is the same, and we're just going through the motions. It's like we're being recorded, going through the same routine again and again.
so here are the questions: is time long or is it wide?
Let's ponder some deep questions about time. Is it a long or a wide thing? What does it really mean?
and the answers? sometimes the answers just come in Mail.
Sometimes the answers to these deep questions come to us in unexpected ways, like a letter in the mail.
and one day you get that letter you've been waiting for forever. and everything it says is true. and then in the last line it says: burn this.
One day, you finally get the answer you've been waiting for. It's all true, but then you're instructed to destroy the evidence.
we're in record.
Again, it feels like we're being recorded or observed somehow. Maybe everything we do is being watched or judged in some way.
and what I really want to know: are things getting better or are they getting worse? can we start all over again? stop. pause. we're in record.
The real question is whether things are improving or getting worse. Can we reset and start again? But we're still being observed or recorded, so maybe it's impossible.
good morning. good night.
Another day has begun and ended, and we've accomplished nothing. We're just going through the motions.
now I in you without a body move. and in our hearts we Standby.
Now I'm a part of you, but without a physical body. We're just waiting around, standing by for something to happen.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: LAURIE ANDERSON
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind