FEATURE:
Amelia
This Flight Tonight: Putting Women at the Centre of Albums
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IT is a bit…
IN THIS PHOTO: Amelia Earhart
of a coincidence, but we have two albums about Amelia Earhart coming along. On 30th August, Laurie Anderson releases Amelia (“Amelia’ is due August 30. Laurie Anderson’s first new album since 2018’s Grammy-winning ‘Landfall,’ it comprises twenty-two tracks about renowned female aviator Amelia Earhart’s tragic last flight. Anderson wrote the music and lyrics. She is joined on the album by Filharmonie Brno, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, and Anohni, Gabriel Cabezas, Rob Moose, Ryan Kelly, Martha Mooke, Marc Ribot, Tony Scherr, Nadia Sirota, and Kenny Wolleson”). You can hear examples of Laurie Anderson speaking about the album. Here on BBC Radio 4 and with The Stranger. Anderson explained why she wanted to focus on Amelia Earhart:
“Why did you choose Amelia Earhart?
She was very badass. She decided, if I complete my flight around the world, I'm going to set up a situation so that girls can participate in shop class. There's still a stigma about women in technology—except in coding. How many women do you see doing other tech stuff? Or, for that matter, how many women are in government? I just thought that we’d be so much more advanced by now.
Things are going backward, like abortion rights. What time is it? I thought we did that in the '70s! We did do it; I was there. I remember our sense of achievement. We never thought it would start going backward like this. We never imagined that. The world is full of stuff that you can’t imagine. But, here we are”.
It is quite a risk perhaps focusing on a subject like a female aviator. Maybe most people do not know who is. Quite obscure in a way. It is important putting women at the front of albums. Making sure we highlight more incredible women. I will come to another album that is about Amelia Earhart. First, this is what Uncut said about Amelia:
“On Amelia, Laurie Anderson tells the story of Earhart’s life as she makes her fateful attempt, in 1937, to circumnavigate the world in a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra plane. It’s a riveting tale anyway, straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, but Anderson – who was first commissioned to work on this back in 2000 and has performed versions of it, on and off, since then – puts herself in Earhart’s position, right in the cockpit, so that we experience the journey as a daily diary inspired by Earhart’s own pilot entries. With Anderson at the controls, imagining what it’s like to fly, it flows as if in a dream state – part biography, part hallucinatory audiobook.
Having written about herself from an anthropological point of view for much of her career – most recently on 2018’s Landfall, with Kronos Quartet, about Hurricane Sandy, and 2015’s reflection on mortality, Heart Of A Dog – Amelia is Anderson’s first major work of biography. But she approaches Earhart with the same cool-headed mix of fascination and curiosity as any of her weightier subjects, looking for what made the woman tick and extracting the humanity in the story through her research. Of course, both Anderson and Earhart are pioneers in their respective fields, and you sense that Anderson sees something of herself in the way Earhart instinctively positioned herself at the forefront of communications, science and technology in the 1930s while breaking down barriers between the sexes. “She was the original blogger,” says Anderson, noting that had Earhart lived, she planned to open an engineering school for girls. As Earhart declares, in a broadcast excerpt Anderson uses for one track: “This modern world of science and invention is of particular interest to women, for the lives of women have been more affected by its new horizons that any other group.”
Anderson calls her first performance of Amelia, at Carnegie Hall in New York in 2000, “a train-wreck”, and so this final recorded version, propelled by an orchestral score that conjures the serenity and anxiety of flight, is the result of years of tweaks and improvements. She added a layer of electronics, guitar and percussion, as well as engine and external sounds for a more immersive listen, and presents each of the 22 tracks as a short diary entry, either a paragraph or page, narrated by Anderson in that calm, reassuring voice. “I remember going to the airfields at night in Los Angeles, and watching the daredevil pilots do loop de loops in the sky,” she says on “Flying At Night”, which Earhart would have done. As the custodian of her late husband Lou Reed’s archive, Anderson, who is 77, knows how difficult it is to assemble biography – Amelia can only be her interpretation of events, laced with that quality of magic realism Anderson brings to all her projects
On that final flight, Earhart set off eastwards from Oakland, California on May 20 with her navigator Fred Noonan, stopping off as planned in various countries on the route, where she would speak to local reporters to make sure her trip received as much publicity as possible. On July 2, they took off from Lae in Papua New Guinea for Howland Island, 2,000 miles away in the Pacific Ocean, but never made it. Radio communication was poor and the plane likely ran out of fuel, ditching in the sea – there have been various attempts to locate it. Earhart and Noonan were officially declared dead in 1939.
Anderson heightens the drama as Earhart’s flight nears its watery end. The music of “India And On Down To Australia” is melodious and dreamy as excitement builds, Anderson whispers and sings using Auto-tune. But as they head over Indonesia, the physical toll hits Earhart – “I’m tired, so tired” – she’s exhausted, almost hallucinating as the chintzy melody from Altered Images’ “Happy Birthday” appears on “Road To Mandalay”, curdling as she becomes disorientated. The titles tell the rest of the story – “Broken Chronometers”, “Nothing But Silt”, “The Wrong Way” – but Anderson’s admiration and affection for this feminist icon is such that you come away from Amelia with a greater respect for those who keep on taking risks”.
It is a case of you wait for an album about Amelia Earhart and then two come along! Public Service Broadcast release The Last Flight on 4th October. It is an album that I would recommend people go and get:
“The Last Flight is our version of the story of Amelia Earhart's final, ill-fated journey in 1937. Having successfully navigated over 20,000 miles and 5 continents on her round-the-world trip, her aircraft, the Electra, vanished without trace near Howland Island. Her whereabouts, and those of her navigator, Fred Noonan, remain a lingering mystery to this day.
Rather than focus exclusively on the flight itself, the record is as much an examination of Earhart's remarkable character. She was an extremely rare blend of grace, composure, technical aptitude and a fortitude that the rest of us mere mortals can barely dream of, all enveloped by the soul of a poet. She was possessed of a seemingly unquenchable thirst for life - in her words, 'to find beauty in living... to know the answer to why I’m alive... and feel its excitement every moment'. That thirst for the abundance of life, the sheer joy and privilege of living, long outlasts her disappearance and death. It should serve as an inspiration, almost an instruction, to the rest of us; this record is our attempt to translate that inspiration into music”.
It is great that a pioneer and this inspirational figure has a couple of albums made about her. That there will be this new awareness of who she was (and her incredible life). I don’t think that Laurie Anderson and Public Service Broadcast were aware of each other’s projects. It would be nice if they combined at some point, as they could create something magnificent. I hope that there is a collaboration down the line.
I am going to move on in a minute. Before I do, Louder spoke with Public Service Broadcast’s J. Wilgoose Esq. about The Last Flight and why the group are focusing on Amelia Earhart. It is going to be very interesting hearing what they offer on their new album. It makes me think more about Amelia Earhart and her importance. Someone who is deserving of more recognition and focus. Perhaps often assumed as being this tragic figure who failed to achieve her dreams and was unimportant. That is clearly not the truth:
“Conceptual pop proggers Public Service Broadcasting have announced that their brand new studio album, The Last Flight, will be based around the final doomed flight of pioneering female “aviatrix” Amelia Earhart.
The Last Flight is the band's first album since 2021's Berlin-based concept album Bright Magic and will be released through SO Recordings on October 4. The band have also shared the video for the first single from the album Electra, which you can watch below.
"The song is about Amelia Earhart's plane, the marvellously named Electra," explains J. Willgoose Esq. "To match the name, the vibrancy and the excitement of the aircraft, the track is full of pulsing electronics and interlocking, percussive melody lines, plus pace."
Aged 25, Earhart flew higher than any woman before her in 1922, and in the years that followed was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, setting multiple speed and distance records. In 1937 Earhart announced that she would circumnavigate the globe in her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra aircraft. She crossed the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. She left Papua New Guinea to fly to Howland Island in the Central Pacific but never made it.
"I wanted to do a woman-focused story, because most of the archive we have access to is overwhelmingly male. I was initially drawn in by Earhart’s final fight, rather than the successes that she had, but the more I read the more I became fascinated by her. Her bravery and her aeronautical achievements were extraordinary, but her philosophy and the dignity that she had… she was an outstanding person.
"The final flight is the spine of the journey: the story jumps off at different points, and examines different facets of her personality, her relationship with her husband, her attitude to flying, her attitude to existing. She gave herself, I think, less than a 50% chance of survival when she flew the Atlantic alone. To put yourself, willingly, in those situations… I think it says something about that drive at the heart of humanity.
"However The Last Flight isn’t doom-laden or covered in grief. There’s adventure, freedom, the joy of being alive. The reason why she wanted to fly was to find the beauty in living – ‘to know the reason why I’m alive, and to feel that every minute.’ The flight did fail, but she was right. Of all the people we’ve written about, I have the deepest respect and admiration for her."
Unlike previous PSB albums, The Last Flight does not feature does not feature original first-person testimony, but dialogue newly recorded by actors, including Kate Graham who read Amelia. The band used Earhart’s own writings including 1937’s Last Flight and her biography East To The Dawn by Susan Butler, as source material”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Vlada Karpovich/Pexels
I would love to think that this is the start of a renaissance regarding putting women at the front. It is true that a lot of albums are male-led. If they feature a subject or person. Most albums are quite personal. We do not have that many albums dedicated to women. So many incredible pioneers, trailblazers and warriors that could be committed to tape. I am thinking of heroines through history, politics, literature, music and beyond. Women like Margaret Atwood being commemorated in a song. Conceptual albums about incredible women through the ages. Whether the album focuses on one woman or takes its time to recognise multiple women, I hope that the two example of Amelia Earhart being celebrated and discussed opens up more conversation. Why more women are not the epicentre of albums. I know that a few artists have taken the time to commemorate women in their albums. Jamila Woods’ LEGACY! LEGACY! Even though the album is not entirely about famous women through time, it does mention quite a few. It was released in 2019. Woods discussed the songs here. There are not that many albums out there where women are highlighted. As I say, most albums are personal and about the self. Those artists talking about their lives and thoughts. When albums are less personal or conceptual, you don’t get much written about women. Think about all the amazing women who could be spotlighted through song.
Artists could write about iconic artists like Madonna, Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, Beyoncé or less exposed or lesser-known music innovators. Just consider the breadth and variety of female subjects. From throughout history to the modern day. There are countless examples who have not had their story told. I also think we need to put women more at the forefront when it comes to various subjects. Misogyny, sexual assault, sexism and discrimination they face. Not that many artists doing that at all. It will be nice to think that more albums will come through. That women will be in the middle. I do hope that there is this consideration. It is important so that future generations have this knowledge and exposure. I am not sure how many women through history are taught at school. Whether there is this understanding at school age. Music is a way of providing this history lesson. Telling stories about these amazing women in an accessible and interesting way. I feel their stories are not told often enough. That has to change. Let’s hope that Laurie Anderson and Public Service Broadcasting pique the interest of other artists. I would love to hear an album where women like Joni Mitchell are sung about. Amazing female politicians and women who have made a big difference through time. Modern-day icons and those who maybe have gone unrecognised. It is only right that incredible women…
GET their dues.