Album Review- Laurie Anderson- Amelia

One of the most enjoyable and typically hard to categorize albums of 2024 is Amelia by Laurie Anderson. 

Amelia is a fictional retelling of the last six weeks in the life of (and the last flight of)Amelia Earhart. From my understanding, it grew out of a project from the year 2000 for Dennis Russel Davies of the American Composers Orchestra (at least that is my understanding. One blog dates it back 40 years but I am not sure how accurate that is). Anderson is accompanied on disc by the Orchestra as well as guitarist Marc Ribot and vocalist ANHONI. 

 Anderson is one of the most unique musical artists to gain mainstream success. 1982s Big Science, 1984s Mister Heartbreak and 1986s Home of the Brave are a mix of the unusual (Anderson is responsible for creating music instruments like the tape-bow violin), the avant garde (Anderson collaborated with William S Burroughs, Eno and even Andy Kaufman among many others) and pop music (O Superman was a worldwide hit and her videos were played on Night Flight).

It is this compelling mix of the unusual and enjoyable that makes Amelia such a success. A mix of narration and introspection, as other reviewers mention, Anderson makes all the right choices here- keeping it stripped down as opposed to the originally planned large Orchestra accompaniment; and largely keeping the mystery of Earhart intact. Showing and not telling if you will. And I probably should do the same because I hate to give the mystery away; but I do wonder what to make of how to sell Anderson in 2025. At 34 minutes (split into 22 songs) it’s a fantastic begin to end listen. 

But as something akin to a poetic performance, I don’t know if it is something that I would listen to over and over again. Even less so, songs don’t necessarily “pop” and make themselves to the kind of playlists that most current music listeners probably utilize. Yet perhaps the world may never more ready for this album than now. It is not a world where there is a binary choice between buying an album or not. Amelia is the kind of experience that listeners can access in the same way they can listen to an audiobook or podcast.