Amanda Palmer

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There's people screaming just like they should... but you don't even know if you're good.

"I am the Girl Anachronism!"

Amanda MacKinnon Gaiman Palmer (also known as "Amanda Fucking Palmer") is a singer, song-writer, pianist, living statue, and ukulele player. She is best known for being half of the "Brechtian punk cabaret" band The Dresden Dolls, along with drummer Brian Viglione. The band went on hiatus in 2008, the same year she released her solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer.

Before her music career, Palmer worked for years as a living statue called "The Eight Foot Bride". She married Neil Gaiman in January 2011, and released her second solo album, Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under later in the same month, with the first single, "Map of Tasmania", gaining much controversy. (It's a happy little song about pubes.)

Her songs vary wildly in style and topics. Most of them are chock full of nice puns, and there's a strong running theme of children's songs in a new grownup context. Amanda's also known for performing covers of whatever she feels like - ranging from Radiohead, to classic musicals, to Black Sabbath, to Britney Spears.

Along with Jason Webley and Sxip Shirey, she's spent much of 2010 on tour with the Evelyn Evelyn project.

And now the Dresden Dolls are back on tour! More info here

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This musician shows examples of:

• Audience Participation: Audience singalongs, audience sleepovers, audience makeshift-French-hotel-wine-parties.
• Bifauxnen: Especially in the "Leeds United" music video.
• Bi the Way: "I'm bisexual, but it's not the sort of thing I spent a lot of time thinking about."
• Broken Record: In the second verse of "Coin-Operated Boy".
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Obviously, but even more so in the early Dresden Dolls clown makeup.
• Epic Rocking: "Mandy Goes to Med School" has been known to become this in concert.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Palmer's purple "Map of Tasmania" (pubic hair) can be briefly seen about 5 or 6 seconds into the video, before appearing in all its glory at 0:35.
• Kurt Weill: Her Kurzweil keyboard is defaced to name-check him, in keeping with the Dresden Dolls' "Brechtian-punk-cabaret" vibe.
• Large Ham
• Last-Note Nightmare: "Slide".
  • "The saddest note in the world"
• Living Statue
• Lyrical Dissonance: Many of her songs, but "Oasis" takes the cake.
  • To clarify, the song is about a girl getting raped at a party and then going to get an abortion, It's presented with a very upbeat tone, almost entirely in major chords. One time in concert, she tried performing the song the way critics thought the song should have sounded: much slower, and with a depressing tone, replete with lots of minor chords. Halfway through the first verse, she says, "fuck it" and goes back to playing the song as originally written.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl
• Messy Hair
  • Unkempt Beauty
• The Musical: The Onion Cellar
  • And she once played the Emcee in a production of Cabaret.
    • And she co-created a musical based on "In the Aeroplane over the Sea" called With the Needle That Sings in Her Heart.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Obviously.
• One of Us: She's married to Neil Gaiman and she apparently watches Doctor Who, once referring to a venue as looking like "a goddamned TARDIS inside."
• Opinion Myopia: The SPIN.com community towards "Map of Tasmania" seems to feel this way. Take a look.
• Organ Autonomy: Name a body part (belly, neck, armpit hair, duodenum...) and it has a Twitter account.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: So very much.
• Refuge in Audacity / Crosses the Line Twice: "Oasis", especially the music video.
• Sanity Slippage Song: "Girl Anachronism", "Runs in the Family", and many others.
  • "Guitar Hero" is another one with some serious Sanity Slippage...
• Self-Backing Vocalist: Done on "Half Jack."
• Shout-Out: Who Killed Laura Amanda Palmer?
  • From "Good Day", a Shout-Out to Gloria Gaynor ("I should have changed that stupid lock (...) I will survive"):

I'd love to have you up to see the place... I'd like to do more than survive, I'd like to rub it in your face!"

• • From "Jeep Song":

I see a red jeep and I want to paint it black!"

• • From "Sing":

Life is no cabaret!"

• • "Oasis" contains references to Blur and, yes, Oasis.
• The Something Song: "The Jeep Song"
  • As well as her cover of Nick Cave's "The Ship Song"
• Stealth Pun: In every single song.
  • From "Guitar Hero":

It's a hit!

• • From "Girl Anachronism":

I'm not right now at all.

• • From "Sex Changes":

You'll never hear the little pitter patter pitter patter of this little feat of engineering... It leaves you feeling pretty hollow...

• Strange Girl
• Unusual Eyebrows: She paints them on in fancy patterns, and has joked that they're actually alien barcodes.