Broadcast Singer Trish Keenan Dies

Jeffrey Ufberg/WireImage

Warp Records has announced that Trish Keenan, singer for the British electronic pop duo Broadcast, has died from complications of pneumonia. As reported yesterday, Keenan had been hospitalized and was said to be suffering from a strain of the H1N1 flu.

Though they were a fairly obscure act, Broadcast were widely admired in indie and electronic music circles. The band, which began releasing singles in 1995, was active up through 2009 when they issued a collaboration with the Focus Group titled Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age.

Photos: Random Notes

If you are not familiar with Keenan and her work with Broadcast, here is a video for their song "Echo's Answer" from the 2000 album The Noise Made By People. The track is a fine showcase for Keenan's gentle, haunting voice and the band's fascinating blend of minimal electronica and '60s psychedelia.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

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