Performance artist/musician Laurie Anderson broke into the music biz with her 1981 single “O Superman” (later included on her 1982 debut album Big Science), which makes allusions to the Man of Steel as the ultimate paternal figure, and, for better or for worse, a symbol of the most powerful nation on Earth. Anderson’s trademark spoken word riffs aren’t to everyone’s tastes, and the synthesizer effects may sound dated to some, but there’s an undeniable power to this eight-and-a-half-minute experiment that remains timeless.