Some Dream Life

By: Story by Grayson Currin | February 08, 2011 | Music

If you read about New York singer Antony Hegarty before you actually hear him sing, the first thing you’ll learn is that the 39-year-old leader of Antony & The Johnsons is transgender. Hegarty was born a boy in Chichester, England, but though he favors the masculine pronoun, he considers himself neither a man nor a woman, neither gay nor straight.

But if you hear Hegarty before you read about him, the first thing you’ll notice is that voice: Capable of paradoxically bold whimpers and meek roars, Hegarty’s voice, according to collaborator Laurie Anderson, “is the most exquisite thing that you will hear in your life.” A bit like the voice of a black woman belting a soul number and a bit like the voice of a funereal songbird, Hegarty’s voice is one of modern music’s most arresting instruments.

No matter how strong, neither of these first impressions is sufficient. Hegarty is more than the sum of his sexual orientation and voice, more than a singer, more than the songwriter. Politically motivated and artistically adventurous, he’s written about the strictures of men’s fashion and the death of modern dance pioneer Kazuo Ohno (pictured on two of his album covers) for the Guardian. He’s appeared in films directed by Steve Buscemi and provocative Frenchman Sébastien Lifshitz, exhibited his artwork in a solo show at a London gallery and recently curated a group show in Paris. His list of musical collaborators — Bjork, Hercules and Love Affair, Rufus Wainwright, Devendra Banhart, CocoRosie and Matmos, to scratch the surface — is only more impressive than it is exhausting. Rock legend Lou Reed tapped him for an album and subsequent tours, while cult icon David Tibet has harnessed Hegarty’s air for several records. He’s currently working on songs for an opera about one of his fans, performance artist Marina Abramović.

“His work is so dense with his own experience,” Abramović told the Guardian last year in a joint interview with Hegarty, “but has enough pure emotion to let the public complete it.”

Below, we comb through Hegarty’s albums and appearances for 10 songs that introduce that experience.

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