Amanda Palmer

Brechtian punk cabaret

Amanda MacKinnon Palmer was born on April 30, 1976 in New York City and is based in Boston. The Dresden Dolls formed there in 2000, after the drummer Brian Viglione saw her perform solo at a Halloween party and the two joined up about a week later; they were first called Out of Arms. She coined the description Brechtian punk cabaret. Their debut was recorded in 2002 with the producer Martin Bisi and released in 2003 on Roadrunner, followed by Yes, Virginia... (April 18, 2006) and the B-sides collection No, Virginia... (May 20, 2008). The band went on hiatus in January 2007 on good terms, and has since reunited for tours in 2010, 2012, 2018 and 2023.

Who Killed Amanda Palmer (Roadrunner, September 16, 2008) was co-produced with Ben Folds and recorded from 2007 to 2008 in Nashville, Seattle, Cotati, San Francisco and Edinburgh; she paid $80,000 of the production herself, and the title nods to Twin Peaks. It reached 77 on the Billboard 200 and, by Nielsen SoundScan, had sold about 38,000 copies by 2012. Theatre Is Evil (September 7, 2012), with the Grand Theft Orchestra on her own 8ft. label, was produced by John Congleton at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne and reached 10 on the Billboard 200. There Will Be No Intermission followed on March 8, 2019. Evelyn Evelyn, with Jason Webley, began in September 2007.

Her Kickstarter campaign, announced April 20, 2012, drew 24,883 backers and $1,192,793, then the most ever raised for a music project on the platform; criticism that she had asked local musicians to play for exposure led her to pay them. She gave the TED talk The Art of Asking in 2013 and published a memoir of the same name on November 11, 2014. She began soliciting Patreon support in March 2015 and has made collaborative records, including You Got Me Singing with Jack Palmer (2016) and I Can Spin a Rainbow with Edward Ka-Spel (2017). Paste ranked her ukulele cover of Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees at 13 among its twenty best cover songs of 2010.