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**Antony and the Johnsons: I Am a Bird Now**
★★★★★

There are albums that whisper, albums that shout, and then there's "I Am a Bird Now" – an album that seems to float into existence like some ethereal transmission from another dimension entirely. Antony Hegarty's 2005 masterpiece didn't just arrive; it materialized, fully formed and utterly otherworldly, carrying with it the weight of profound transformation and the lightness of absolute liberation.

Before this career-defining moment, Antony had been cultivating a devoted underground following in New York's experimental music scene with the 2000 debut "Antony and the Johnsons." That earlier work established the template – chamber pop arrangements supporting one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music – but it was merely a prelude to the revelation that would follow. The years between albums saw Antony collaborating with avant-garde luminaries like Björk and developing the confidence to fully embrace the vulnerability that would make "I Am a Bird Now" so devastatingly beautiful.

What genre contains Antony's voice? It's a question that feels almost insulting to ask. This is chamber pop filtered through cabaret, art song reimagined as torch ballad, folk music for creatures that have never walked on solid ground. Hegarty's four-octave range swoops and soars with an androgynous power that recalls Nina Simone's emotional directness, Jeff Buckley's ethereal reach, and something entirely unprecedented. The arrangements, crafted with the Johnsons, create intimate orchestral spaces where piano, strings, and subtle electronics form gossamer cocoons around these songs of metamorphosis.

The album opens with "Hope There's Someone," a prayer disguised as a lullaby that immediately establishes the record's central themes of mortality, spirituality, and the search for connection. It's a song that manages to be both deeply personal and universally resonant, with Antony's voice climbing toward something like transcendence over Julia Kent's cello and the band's delicate accompaniment. When Boy George appears on "You Are My Sister," it's not celebrity cameo but spiritual communion – two voices that have lived outside conventional boundaries finding common ground in melody.

"For Today I Am a Boy" serves as the album's emotional centerpiece, a devastating meditation on gender identity that predated much of the cultural conversation around trans experiences by years. The song's power lies not in its politics but in its profound humanity, with Antony delivering lines like "one day I'll grow up, I'll be a beautiful woman" with such raw honesty that the listener feels privileged to witness this moment of self-revelation. It's followed by the equally stunning "Man Is the Baby," where Rufus Wainwright's harmonies create a gorgeous counterpoint to Antony's lead vocals in what amounts to a hymn for the confused and searching.

The album's most audacious moment might be the cover of "Crazy in Love," which transforms Beyoncé's kinetic pop anthem into something resembling a medieval ballad. In lesser hands, this could have been novelty; instead, it becomes a meditation on desire that reveals new depths in the original while showcasing Antony's ability to make any song sound like it emerged from their own subconscious.

"I Am a Bird Now" would go on to win the Mercury Prize, making Antony the first openly transgender artist to receive the honor, but accolades feel almost beside the point when discussing music this transcendent. The album's influence can be heard in everyone from Perfume Genius to FKA twigs, artists who understand that vulnerability can be its own form of strength.

Following this triumph, Antony continued pushing boundaries with 2009's "The Crying Light," a more environmental-focused work that maintained the ethereal beauty while expanding the sonic palette, and later evolved into the electronic project ANOHNI, whose 2016 album "Hopelessness" tackled climate change and political upheaval with characteristic fearlessness.

But "I Am a Bird Now" remains the essential statement, an album that sounds like it was recorded in some liminal space between earth and sky, between one identity and another, between despair and hope. Nearly two decades later, it still feels like a transmission from the future, a reminder that the most profound art often comes from those brave enough to live completely outside the lines society has drawn. In a world increasingly aware of the beauty found in transformation, Antony's bird has never stopped soaring.