Anita Lane, an Australian singer-songwriter known for collaborating with Nick Cave and the Birthday Party as well as her own recordings, has died at 62.
Cave paid tribute on social media, tweeting, “From her to eternity” — a perhaps inevitable eulogy, given that the song that went by that title was her most famous co-write and one of the most celebrated songs by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
Lane first collaborated with Cave when he was a member of the Birthday Party. She was a classmate of the Birthday Party’s Rowland S. Howard and ended up co-penning several songs for that band, going on to co-write with Cave after that, too, with songs including not just “From Her to Eternity,” “A Dead Song,” “Kiss Me Black” and “Dead John,” but “Stranger Than Kindness,” a Bad Seeds standout for which she wrote all the lyrics. (Cave named a recent book after that song.)
Her solo career began with the 1988 EP “Dirty Songs,” followed by two albums, 1993’s “Dirty Pearls” and 2001’s “Sex O’Clock,” before she seemed to retreat from public life.
So sad, she goes away with a big piece of our heart.
