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U.K.-born, California-raised singer/songwriter
Anohni felt like the consummate outsider until coming face to face with the image of
Boy George on the cover of
Culture Club's 1982 debut album,
Kissing to Be Clever. Eight years later,
Anohni relocated to New York City and found a world more accepting of avant-garde sensibilities and gender fluidity. An early incarnation was the cabaret ensemble Blacklips, modeled after Blue Velvet-era
Isabella Rossellini and the drag queen who graced the cover of
Soft Cell's 1982 single "Torch."
Anohni formed
Antony and the Johnsons in 1998, and the band released their self-titled debut on
David Tibet's Durtro label in 2000, followed by an appearance on the
Lou Reed albums
The Raven and
Animal Serenade, plus a tour with
Reed throughout 2003. (
Anohni also appeared in the 2000
Steve Buscemi film Animal Factory as an androgynous convict.)
Antony and the Johnsons released a series of EPs in 2004, followed by the group's second full-length, the Mercury Prize-winning
I Am a Bird Now, in February 2005.
Anohni spent the next two years on the road, as well as appearing on
Björk's
Volta and in the
Leonard Cohen documentary I'm Your Man before returning to the studio for the 2008 EP
Another World, which preceded 2009's full-length
The Crying Light.
Antony and the Johnsons' fourth studio album,
Swanlights, arrived the following year. In 2011, the album's publisher, Abrams, issued a companion edition of
Swanlights collected in book form, with
Anohni's paintings, drawings, photography, collages, song lyrics, and writings. In 2012, the band released
Cut the World, a symphonic retrospective arranged and performed in collaboration with the
Danish National Chamber Orchestra. It featured 11 tracks from their catalog and the title cut, a new song written for Robert Wilson's stage production The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic. In 2006,
Anohni collaborated with video artist Charles Atlas on a performance piece called Turning, which combined a live performance by
Antony and the Johnsons with video projections created by Atlas and featuring women who had struggled with self-image and sexual identity in their lives. Atlas later made a documentary about the show, simply titled
Turning, and in 2014 the film's soundtrack album was released in tandem with a DVD edition of the film.
In 2016,
Anohni released her solo debut album,
Hopelessness, which featured production by
Hudson Mohawke and
Oneohtrix Point Never as well as herself. That year, she became the second openly transgender artist to be nominated for an Academy Award when "Manta Ray," a song co-written with
J. Ralph for the documentary Racing Extinction, earned a nomination for Best Original Song. ~ TiVo Music