Antony

U.K.-born, California-raised Antony Hegarty felt like the consummate outsider until coming face to face with the image of <a href="spotify:artist:2BWfZGPtsjRlRp7JTDqI45">Boy George</a> on the cover of <a href="spotify:artist:6kz53iCdBSqhQCZ21CoLcc">Culture Club</a>'s 1982 debut album, Kissing to Be Clever. Eight years later, Hegarty relocated to New York City and found a world more accepting of avant-garde sensibilities and sexual ambiguity. An early incarnation was the cabaret ensemble Blacklips, modeled after Blue Velvet-era Isabella Rossellini and the drag queen who graced the cover of <a href="spotify:artist:6aq8T2RcspxVOGgMrTzjWc">Soft Cell</a>'s 1982 single "Torch."

Hegarty formed <a href="spotify:artist:4fxp616ALtFWnXfwxnjLzW">Antony and the Johnsons</a> in 1998, and the band released its self-titled debut on David Tibet's <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Durtro%22">Durtro</a> label in 2000, followed by an appearance on the <a href="spotify:artist:42TFhl7WlMRXiNqzSrnzPL">Lou Reed</a> albums The Raven and Animal Serenade, plus a tour with <a href="spotify:artist:42TFhl7WlMRXiNqzSrnzPL">Reed</a> throughout 2003. (Hegarty also appeared in the 2000 Steve Buscemi film Animal Factory as an androgynous convict.) <a href="spotify:artist:4fxp616ALtFWnXfwxnjLzW">Antony and the Johnsons</a> released a series of EPs in 2004, followed by the band's second full-length, the Mercury Prize-winning I Am a Bird Now, in February of 2005. <a href="spotify:artist:4fxp616ALtFWnXfwxnjLzW">Antony</a> spent the next two years on the road, as well as appearing on <a href="spotify:artist:7w29UYBi0qsHi5RTcv3lmA">Björk</a>'s Volta and in the <a href="spotify:artist:5l8VQNuIg0turYE1VtM9zV">Leonard Cohen</a> 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.

<a href="spotify:artist:4fxp616ALtFWnXfwxnjLzW">Antony and the Johnsons</a>' 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 <a href="spotify:artist:4fxp616ALtFWnXfwxnjLzW">Antony</a>'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 <a href="spotify:artist:5tqGSxgUWgnJf09eOwCvEz">the Danish National Chamber Orchestra</a>. 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, Hegarty collaborated with video artist Charles Atlas on a performance piece called Turning, which combined a live performance by <a href="spotify:artist:4fxp616ALtFWnXfwxnjLzW">Antony and the Johnsons</a> with video projections created by Atlas 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 2015, <a href="spotify:artist:4fxp616ALtFWnXfwxnjLzW">Antony</a> announced the impending release of a new project with <a href="spotify:artist:6olWbKW2VLhFCHfOi0iEDb">Hudson Mohawke</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:2wPDbhaGXCqROrVmwDdCrK">Oneohtrix Point Never</a>. The resulting Hopelessness, a dark, experimental electronic piece that the she released under the moniker <a href="spotify:artist:6VJZYivuYJGCrPuOAnI7Qo">Anohni</a>, was issued in 2016. That same year <a href="spotify:artist:4fxp616ALtFWnXfwxnjLzW">Antony</a> received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song, with <a href="spotify:artist:2GPriNLwjGv7sjsgIex8Wv">J. Ralph</a>, for "Manta Ray," which appeared in the 2015 documentary film Racing Extinction. ~ James Christopher Monger, Rovi