Amanda Palmer Disrobes Onstage In Response To Newspaper Misogyny

If there’s two things that Amanda Palmer is no stranger too, it’s controversy and being unashamed of her body, and in a recent live performance, the former Dresden Dolls turned solo star used both qualities to powerful effect in a (very) public display in response to UK rag‘s sensationalist report of her Glastonbury performance, as The Guardian reports.

The Daily Mail ran a story on Palmer “making a boob herself” at England’s recent three-day Glastonbury music festival in reference to her breast “escaping” its bra during her set – complete with hi-res images (and not much else besides).

In a nice piece of theatrical revenge, the uke-toting musician responded to the article last Friday night when she headlined the London Roundhouse, performing an open letter to The Daily Mail in 3/4 time, calling out the paper for “debasing women” and featuring lyrics such as:

Dear Daily Mail,
It’s so sad what you tabloids are doing,
Your focus on debasing womens’ appearances
Devolves our species of humans,
But a rag is a rag, and far be it from me,
To go censoring anyone – oh no,
It appears that my entire body is currently
Trying to escape this kimono!

The footage of the Roundhouse performance soon went viral, lighting up Twitter with multiple recorded fan videos of The Daily Mail riposte. While the video has spread across social media despite its NSFW nudity.

Palmer knows full well the power of social media to spread her message and confirmed in a tweet that it was her intention for the performance to go viral, which she explains was a one-off.

loving the descriptions of this song, which ill probably never play again. how people share things is sometimes more awesome than the things
— Amanda Palmer (@amandapalmer) July 13, 2013

As Palmer herself points out, it’s hardly the first time she’s disrobed for the sake of her art and music (or others, in the case of The Flaming Lips using her in a music video to replace an angry Erykah Badu). The Guardian also points to a German concert in 2012 where Palmer got naked in front of fans post-concert allowing them to sign her body.

It’s a moment she also discussed as a keynote speaker for a TED 2013 Talks held in California last March, where Palmer discussed the power of crowdfunding in ‘The Art Of Asking’.

Currently sitting at over 1 million views on YouTube, Palmer discusses becoming one of the major success stories of fan sourcing after her Kickstarter project raised approximately $1.2 million dollars from around 25,000 backers for her most recent record, Theatre Is Evil.

“I got a lot of criticism online after my Kickstarter went big for continuing my crazy crowdsourcing practices,” Palmer said on-stage during the TED Conference; “specifically for asking musicians who were fans if they wanted to join us onstage for a few songs in exchange for love and tickets and beer. And this hurt in a really familiar way,” she says.

“People saying you’re not allowed to ask anymore for that kind of help reminded me of the people saying get a job,” recounts the punk cabaret singer. “Because they weren’t with us on the sidewalk and they couldn’t see the exchange that was happening between me and my crowd, an exchange that was very fair to us. But alien to them.”

The organisers of Brisbane-based conference BIGSOUND are obviously hoping Palmer will draw on her wisdom and experiences when she heads out for as one of the key speakers, alongside Billy Bragg, for this September’s event, Palmer’s first appearance Down Under since cancelling her Aussie tour and Mona Foma appearance late last year.

BIGSOUND 2013 SPEAKERS FIRST ANNOUNCE

BILLY BRAGG (UK)
AMANDA PALMER (USA)
KASEY CHAMBERS (AUS)
REGURGITATOR (AUS)
SIMON RAYMONDE – BELLA UNION (UK)
JOHN WATSON – JOHN WATSON MANAGEMENT / ELEVEN MUSIC (AUS)
BRAD JONES – PRODUCER (NASHVILLE) (USA)
MATT MCDONALD – CMJ (USA)
NIC WARNOCK – RIP SOCIETY (AUS)
GRIMUR ATLASON – ICELAND AIRWAVES – (ICELAND)
CHLOE GOODYEAR – WOODFORD – (AUS)
BILLY JONES – PIANOS – (USA)

Read our BIGSOUND 2012 coverage including the BIGSOUND Blog: Day One, Day Two, the BIGSOUND Live Wrap-Up: 1st Night, the 2nd Night Live Wrap-Up; as well as reviews of the EMI Music Party and Jeremy Neale @ Ric’s Bar.