2012 HTC One Free Fall Commercial – What’s the Song?

An eight-minute avant garde track from the early 1980s may not seem like a typical choice when it comes to selecting background music for commercials, but such a song is featured in a 2012 HTC One spot that follows a free falling photographer who tries to shoot images while plunging towards Earth during a skydive.

The muted pulsing of experimental musician Laurie Anderson's biggest hit, 1981's 'O Superman,' can be heard as a photo student named Tony and members of his team fall through the air at 126 miles per hour. Tony takes photos on his HTC phone while simultaneously recording video of his descent, then uploads them to the internet before he hits the ground. Now that is one fancy cell phone!

'O Superman' was a minimalist track from Anderson's 'Big Science' album. The lyrics, based on an 1885 opera, were both spoken and sung into a vocoder.

The unusual structure of 'O Superman' made it a song critics and fans seemed to either love or hate. The track tied the Rolling Stones' 'Start Me Up' as the No. 1 single of 1981, according to the famed Village Voice Pazz and Jop critics poll. The song reached No. 2 on the British singles chart.

Hear Laurie Anderson's 'O Superman' in the 2012 HTC One Free Fall Commercial