| Mister Heartbreak | ||||
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| Released | February 14, 1984 | |||
| Recorded | July–December 1983 | |||
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| Genre | ||||
| Length | 40:16 | |||
| Label | Warner Bros. | |||
| Producer | ||||
| Laurie Anderson chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Mister Heartbreak | ||||
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Mister Heartbreak is the second studio album by American avant-garde artist, singer and composer Laurie Anderson, released on February 14, 1984, by Warner Bros. Records.
Like its predecessor, Big Science, Mister Heartbreak contains reworked elements of Anderson's performance piece United States Live ("Langue d'Amour", "Kokoku", and "Blue Lagoon"). However, Anderson also introduced new material ("Sharkey's Day"/"Sharkey's Night" and "Gravity's Angel"), while "Excellent Birds", written in collaboration with Peter Gabriel, was written for video artist Nam June Paik's installation Good Morning, Mr. Orwell .
"Gravity's Angel" borrows imagery from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Anderson had "wanted to make an opera of that book ... and asked him if that would be OK... He said, 'You can do it, but you can only use banjo.' And so I thought, 'Well, thanks. I don't know if I could do it like that." [3] "Blue Lagoon" contains allusions to other tales of the sea: William Shakespeare's The Tempest and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick .[ citation needed ]
The album's opening track, "Sharkey's Day", formed the basis of a popular music video. Author William S. Burroughs read the lyrics of "Sharkey's Night", while Peter Gabriel co-wrote and provided vocals on "Excellent Birds", an alternate version of which, entitled "This is the Picture (Excellent Birds)", also appeared on the CD edition of his 1986 album So . [4] According to Anderson, she and Gabriel "could never agree on what a bassline was...it turned into a standoff and so we each put out our own version of the song." [5] A third version of the song can be heard in the music video version, directed by Dean Winkler.
Despite Anderson's aversion to guitars on Big Science, she changed her approach on Mister Heartbreak and employed the services of King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew, who appeared on four tracks. Belew recalled that Anderson originally conceived of "Sharkey's Day" as having a "hoedown kind of feel" that centered around an instrument resembling a jew's harp. When describing his approach to the song, Belew stated that "I gravitated toward a very aggressive sound from a pedal called the Foxx Tone Machine, an octave fuzz pedal whose sound resembles the solo sound in Jimi Hendrix's 'Purple Haze'". Anderson subsequently reworked "Sharkey's Day" to accommodate for Belew's guitar overdubs. [6]
Most of the songs on the album were later performed in Anderson's concert film Home of the Brave . Burroughs appears in the film in two brief segments, reciting lines from "Sharkey's Night". "Gravity's Angel" was used in a trailer for the 1991 film Naked Lunch , an adaptation of Burroughs' 1959 novel of the same name. "Sharkey's Night" was also featured in the Australian short documentary film Ladies Please! (1995).[ citation needed ] The album art was originally made as a series of lithographs published with Bud Shark when Anderson was a visiting artist at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado. [7]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [8] |
| Rolling Stone | [9] |
| Sounds | [10] |
| The Village Voice | A− [2] |
All songs written by Laurie Anderson, except where noted.
Side one
Side two
Musicians
Technical
Album
| Year | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1984 | The Billboard 200 | 60 [11] |
| 1984 | Canada RPM | 41 [12] |
| 1984 | Dutch Album Chart | 23 [13] |
| 1984 | Swiss Album Chart | 19 |
| 1984 | New Zealand Album Chart | 12 |
| 1984 | Swedish Album Chart | 46 |
| 1984 | UK Album Chart | 93 [14] |
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American avant-garde artist, musician and filmmaker whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting, Anderson pursued a variety of performance art projects in New York City during the 1970s, focusing particularly on language, technology, and visual imagery. She achieved unexpected commercial success when her song "O Superman" reached number two on the UK singles chart in 1981.
Robert Steven "Adrian" Belew is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. A multi-instrumentalist primarily known as a guitarist and singer, he is noted for his unusual approach to the instrument, his playing often resembling sound effects or noises made by animals and machines.
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Big Science is the debut studio album by American performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson. It was the first of a seven-album deal Anderson signed with Warner Bros. Records. The album consists of a selection of musical highlights from her eight-hour production United States Live, which was itself released as a 5-LP box set and book in 1984.
United States Live is the first live album and third overall album by avant-garde singer-songwriter Laurie Anderson. Released as a 5-record boxed set, the album is a recording of a performance of Anderson's piece United States at Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City in February 1983.
Manilow is the eleventh studio album by singer-songwriter Barry Manilow, released in 1985. It was his first album to miss the Top 40 and fail to earn a gold certification. Many feel it was due to the prominence of synthesizers, a departure from his renowned piano ballads. This album was one of Manilow's two albums with RCA Records.
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Home of the Brave is the third studio album and first soundtrack album by avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson, released in 1986 by Warner Bros. Records. The album is a soundtrack of her concert film of the same name.
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Gravity is the third studio album by American saxophonist Kenny G. It was released in May 1985, and reached number 13 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart, number 37 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and number 97 on the Billboard 200.
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David Van Tieghem is an American composer, percussionist and sound designer, best known for his philosophy of utilizing any available object as a percussion instrument and for his collaborations with the experimental artists Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno, Steve Reich, Robert Ashley and David Byrne.
Peace Together was a 20 July 1993 fundraiser compilation album released by the Peace Together organisation, dedicated to promoting peace in Northern Ireland, which was initiated by Robert Hamilton, of The Fat Lady Sings, and Ali McMordie of Stiff Little Fingers. Sasha King and Lisa Johnson also joined the Peace Together team at the inception.
"Excellent Birds" is a song written by Laurie Anderson and Peter Gabriel. It was first included on Anderson's Mister Heartbreak album in 1984. Gabriel later reworked the song for his So album in 1986 with the title "This is the Picture (Excellent Birds)". This version was excluded from the original vinyl edition of So but appeared as the final track on the cassette and CD releases. For later releases, "In Your Eyes" was placed the last song on So instead, moving "This is the Picture (Excellent Birds)" earlier in the track listing.
