Album Review: Amelia by Laurie Anderson

For all of her quirky experiments and odd, David Lynchian curiosity, composer and multi-instrumentalist Laurie Anderson may have given us her most accessible work yet in 2024. While 1989’s Strange Angels was Anderson’s largely successful attempt at a straightforward pop/rock album, Amelia is a crowd-pleaser for a different reason. In a world of streaming documentary binge-watchers, an album that tells the story of Amelia Earhart’s fateful, final voyage would appeal to many potential record buyers.

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Maybe there's a bit of Amelia Earhart in Grammy Award-winning composer Laurie Anderson. Earhart set herself an ambitious goal - to be the first woman to fly around the world. An experienced pilot, she and her navigator Fred Noonan left Miami on 1 June 1937 for an east-west route that would have totalled 29,000 miles and lasted just over a month. Her plane was a specially-modified Lockheed Electra 10-E aircraft, enhanced to increase fuel capacity and equipped with innovative radio equipment.

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Nearly twenty-five years after she first premiered a version of it live, Laurie Anderson has recorded her ode to pilot Amelia Earhart's final flight. Amelia plays out like a single, continuous piece, though it is chopped up into twenty-two brief chapters. In this whirlwind of storytelling, Anderson wrangles the joy of discovery and achievement in a balance with the foreboding of an ending we already know.

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