Poe (US singer/songwriter Anne Danielewski)

Poe (born Anne Decatur Danielewski /ˈdæniəlɛfski/; March 23, 1968) is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. Poe's musical style is a blend of rock, jazz, electronica, folk, and hip hop elements combined with intimate lyrical compositions. Many of Poe's songs have been featured in films and on television. Poe first hit the modern rock charts in 1995. Some of her early charting singles included "Angry Johnny", "Trigger Happy Jack", "Hello", and "Hey Pretty". Videos for these singles had heavy rotation on MTV. Poe spent six years with Atlantic Records and is currently on her own label, Repoezessed Music Records. Poe's involvement with her online community of fans via her website and the fan sites that supported her early in her career predated modern social networking platforms and were among the first of their kind. Atlantic Records' Senior Vice President of New Media, Nikki Sleight, referred to Poe's online power and one-on-one communication with thousands attending her concerts as "unheard of and pretty phenomenal" in Sleight's 1997 interview with Web Magazine. In 2004, she co-founded the digital innovations agency Signature Creative Inc with John Gheur. In September 2014, Poe received the title of UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador due to her invitation by Yoko Ono to participate in a UNICEF campaign and her donated performance. The campaign launched a world version of John Lennon's classic song "Imagine" featuring dozens of musical artists from around the world. Poe joined others singing in the music video that included a video clip of John Lennon that spearheads a global campaign by UNICEF to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Born in New York City, Poe is the daughter of Polish film director Tad Z. Danielewski and his wife Priscilla Decatur Machold. Poe and her brother, novelist Mark Z. Danielewski, lived in six different countries before she turned eight. Her father's film directing took the family to Africa, India, Spain, Switzerland, England, and the United States. When Poe was 12, her father moved his family to Provo, Utah to join the Arts faculty at Brigham Young University. Poe attended junior high school and some of high school in Provo. When Poe's parents divorced, Poe, then 16, left home and moved to New York City where she lived in a squat on the lower east side of Manhattan while attempting to connect with her estranged mother. Poe continued submitting schoolwork to her high school in Utah and eventually graduated. She pursued her undergraduate studies at Princeton University, where she organized her first band. Poe began experimenting with musical samplers and sequencers as a teenager. Noteworthy are her early collaborations with J Dilla of Slum Village. Poe's musical influences ranged "from Black Flag to Bob Dylan -- from Billie Holiday to Tribe Called Quest" according to music writer Stephen Grecco. Poe was signed to Modern/Atlantic Records in 1994 on the strength of the demos she made with J Dilla and RJ Rice in RJ's living room in Detroit. On January 28, 1996, The New York Times named Poe, along with Alanis Morissette, among the defining voices of the current "movement in music" which featured "angry" female artists who were "...articulate, sexually explicit, both lover and fighter...(women who) reject self-pity and refuse to define themselves purely in terms of their connection to men." In September 1996, Glamour published a picture of Poe, with a snarl on her face and wearing a tee-shirt on which she had written the words, "Happy-Well-Adjusted Female." In the accompanying interview, Poe says "I don't think 'Angry' really sums it up at all!" In the November 14, 1996, issue of Rolling Stone, Poe's album, "Hello," attained a position on the Reader's Top Ten Chart. and in August 1997, Esquire named Poe, along with Gwen Stefani, Lil' Kim, and Sarah McLachlan among the top five "Women Who Rock Our World". Poe began her first major tour in January 1996, as the opening act for Lenny Kravitz. She and her touring band (Daris Adkins on Guitar, Dan Marfisi "Jones" on Drums, Toby Skard on bass, and Cameron Stone on cello) then continued touring extensively as headliners and at festivals until 1999, when she stopped to begin pre-production on her second album for Atlantic. Pollstar Magazine reported in 1998 that Poe had performed for approximately 600 shows in a two-year time period. Poe's first album, Hello, was released in 1995. Musically, the album was described as a sample-rich amalgam of hip-hop, rock, and jazz. Lyrically, the album was filled with literary allusions, film nods, comic book references, and psychological irony. The CD was critically acclaimed. Hits Magazine called "Hello" an "over-the-top PoMo masterpiece."[clarification needed] In an interview on Spotify's Landmark series discussing the making of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, Glen Ballard quoted "Hello was probably the biggest influence I had at that time, honestly, because it was a brilliant record that had jazz influence, hip hop, electronic, rock. It was a hybrid of the first degree."[better source needed] Not long after the album's release, Poe's single, "Trigger Happy Jack (Drive By a Go-Go)" broke into the top 20 of the Billboard Alternative and Modern Rock chart. "Trigger Happy Jack" was produced by Dave Jerden (Jane's Addiction, Alice in Chains) and Jeffrey Connor and featured Matt Sorum (of Guns N' Roses) on drums and Dean Pleasants (of Suicidal Tendencies) on guitar. Poe met Jeffrey Connor towards the completion of the record as a session bassist she hired for additional overdubs on "Hello". Connor had given Poe a track he started writing after working with her. Poe heard the demo and passed it to Jerden who immediately gave the track the green light and had Connor come in to produce. Connor brought in Sorum and Pleasants for what was to become "Trigger Happy Jack". It featured the lyric "You can't talk to a psycho like a normal human being". The song's video went into high rotation on MTV and introduced Poe to the mainstream. Also in 1997, Atlantic released a maxi CD and 12-inch vinyl single of "Trigger Happy Jack" which included "The Drive By Remix" and "The Psycho Demolition Mix" by Steve Lyon, an instrumental version of the song, and a "Poe Only" Mix. Another single, "Angry Johnny", broke into the top 10 of Billboard's Modern Rock chart, and also enjoyed heavy rotation on radio. The song's video received high rotation on MTV. The song featured the line, "I wanna blow you...(pause) away." A promotional maxi-single of the song was released to radio but was never available commercially. This single included a "Band Mix" produced by Poe and Matt Sorum that received heavy rotation on radio. There was another remix done by the Spanish producer Jesus N. Gomez.[citation needed] In August 1997, Atlantic released a maxi-single of the song "Hello" that included six remixes of the song ("Hello: E-Smoove Funk Mix" by E-Smoove/ "Hello: Modern Mix" by Edge Factor/ "Hello: Nevins Electronica Mix" by Jason Nevins/ "Hello: The Generator Mix by E-Smoove/ "Hello: The Edge Factor Mix" by, Edge Factor, and "Hello: Trial Dub Mix" by Edge Factor.) On September 13, 1997, "Hello" hit number one on the Billboard Hot Dance chart. The video for this song also enjoyed heavy rotation on MTV. On November 20, 1997, the RIAA awarded Hello gold certification. Poe's second album, Haunted, was released in October 2000. The album, produced by Poe and Olle Romo was inspired by Poe's discovery of a box of audio tapes that contained recordings of her late father's voice. Listening to those tapes for the first time proved so difficult for Poe that she was hesitant to use them in her music. She was quoted in the Los Angeles Times, "I took these tapes home, and I couldn't listen to them. It was too hard, so I kept finding ways to avoid it. They were sitting on my coffee table next to a boombox for quite some time." Poe was quoted in the New