Matthew Popp | Issue 12, Fall 2026

The self-proclaimed tagline for Laurie Anderson’s studio debut album, Big Science—“This is the time. And this is the record of the time.”—is an audacious one. A distilled version of Anderson’s eight-hour performance piece United States Live, Big Science is meticulously fashioned out of offbeat horns, uncannily manipulated vocals laced with deadpan humor, and a healthy dose of American critique. The product is a record that feels quietly apocalyptic—the musical equivalent of a bomb shelter—one that was not only highly salient upon its 1982 release, but continues to be equally, even eerily, prescient. Tracks like the surprise commercial hit “O Superman” and the spoken-word “Born, Never Asked” pierced the heart of the early Reagan era with gut-wrenching specificity, while “Example #22” wields a cold, alienated “voice of authority” and a radical spareness to placidly conjure the horrors of the twentieth century—and those to come. The future is here, and if you ask Laurie Anderson, it has been for some time.