“Sharkey's Night” by Laurie Anderson

"Sharkey's Night" is the after-hours twin of "Sharkey's Day", the track that opens Mister Heartbreak, Laurie Anderson's second album, released by Warner Bros. in February 1984. Anderson wrote the words and the music, but she hands the microphone to William S. Burroughs, who reads her lyrics for her.

She produced it with Bill Laswell, Leanne Ungar engineered and Mike Krowiak assisted on the mix. For Mister Heartbreak, Anderson ran the Synclavier through every track and set out to make a record that could stand on its own two feet with no pictures to lean on, and she let herself sing more than she had on her first album, where she'd mostly relied on pitch-shifted vocals. Here, though, the voice in the spotlight is someone else's.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.