A-side Anchorage Released 1988 Length 3:24 | B-side Fogtown Genre Rock Label Mercury Records | |
"Anchorage" is a song by Michelle Shocked released as a single from her 1988 album Short Sharp Shocked.
The song is about the narrator named Chel finally taking time out to write to an old friend, who has moved from Texas to Anchorage, and her friend's reply. In her reply, her friend realizes she might have become a housewife "anchored down in Anchorage", although still dreaming about being a "skateboard punk rocker in New York". She tells Chel that her husband Leroy "says send a picture, hello and to keep on rocking".
Much of the song's lyrics were taken directly from a letter from JoAnn Kelli Bingham, a Comanche Indian and recently married friend who had recently moved to geographically remote Alaska. Her husband is Leroy Bingham, a Blackfeet Indian who worked for Cook Inlet Tribal Council.