Anita Lane has died, aged 62, a representative for her label has confirmed.
Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1960, Lane was a classmate of the Birthday Party’s Rowland S. Howard, and co-wrote several tracks for the band with Nick Cave. After the Birthday Party split, she co-wrote Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ ‘From Her To Eternity’, and ‘Stranger Than Kindness’, arguably two of that band’s finest songs.
Lane also worked with Kid Congo Powers, Gudrun Gut, Die Haut and Einstürzende Neubauten across her career, while she contributed vocals to Mick Harvey’s Serge Gainsbourg tribute albums, and released a superb cover of ‘These Boots Were Made For Walking’ with Barry Adamson.
Lane was a constant presence among the Mute and Some Bizarre circle of artists during the 1980s, and also contributed the wry lyric "we could go out for dinner but we’re always on drugs" to Soft Cell’s classic Last Night In Sodom track ‘L’Esqualita’.
Although arguably best known for these collaborations, Lane had a solo career that included 1988 debut EP Dirty Sings, 1993’s brilliant Dirty Pearl album, a collection of collaborations, covers and original songs, and 2001’s Sex O’Clock LP.
As this recent tQ article discussed, Lane’s exploration of female sexuality felt ahead of its time, and it seemed that in the context of contemporary artists like Lana Del Rey, her work might be ripe for a reappraisal and a wider audience, especially with planned reissues of her work coming out on Mute later this year. You can read a lovely tribute from the label here.
