Lynda Carter, wonder woman of the stage, screen, and studio, is chatting with Music Times about her two new singles, the election-year protest anthem "Rise Up" and an ode to her late husband titled "Letters From Earth." But we can't resist bringing up one of her most iconic musical moments: When she dazzled on her 1980 television variety special Lynda Carter Encore!, covering KISS in a sheer-illusion Bob Mackie bodysuit while flanked by a dance troupe of jazz-handing, high-kicking Gene, Paul, Ace, and Peter clones.
"Oh: 'I was made for loving you, you were made for loving me...'" she sings over the phone, cracking up at the campy memory. "And in that outfit? I mean, just the lyric itself and the whole thing — that was just the best!"
What Carter doesn't remember, however, is that six years after Encore! aired, the real Gene Simmons appeared in the cult spy flick Never Too Young to Die playing the Rocky Horror-esque drag villainess Velvet Von Ragnar... and he was wearing an identical Mackie-esque get-up. A member of Carter's PR team actually Googles the movie trailer during our interview, and the singer/actress breaks into roaring laughter once again.
"Oh, my goodness! It's the same outfit! I just saw it. It's just so good. He's so fabulous — Gene Simmons dresses as Lynda C., for a change!" she exclaims. "Oh, Gene, you're just too great. I need to see Gene Simmons and just hug him and say, 'Thank you so much for that.'"
Carter sounds delighted about the prospect of Simmons lending her a bit of rock cred. (Side note: That surreal KISS number was part of Encore!'s "Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy" medley, which also included some Tina Turner "Proud Mary" cosplay and a Bette Midler cover for which Carter "slid down a banana, or something silly like that.") Carter actually began singing in nightclubs at age 14, and long before she landed the role of a lifetime playing Diana Prince in the Wonder Woman action series, music had been her first passion. When Carter, who was proudly hands-on with creation of her variety shows, is asked how she selected the songs for her splashy musical numbers, she quips, "It's because I didn't have any hit records myself! So, I didn't have to follow any rules."
Carter explains, "I actually tried to get a record deal when I first moved to L.A. But it was always that conundrum: If you're a singer, you can't be an actress. You couldn't tell casting people that you were a singer, and the music labels didn't want to hear that you also acted. You had to be on one turf; it was that kind of situation. But then I got Wonder Woman, and then they figured out I could sing, so then I got to do these other things."
It was at the height of Wonder Woman mania that Carter's two worlds collided, when she released her 1978 debut album, Portrait, and then performed its single "Toto (Don't It Feel Like Paradise)" — which she cowrote — on Wonder Woman's epic rock 'n' roll "American Hot Wax" episode. That episode, which depicted Diana going undercover to fight extortionists in the record industry, even starred future pop/rock sensation Rick Springfield as a member of a (clown-painted and actually very KISS-like) band called Antimatter. That same year, the first of Carter's five Carol Burnett-inspired TV specials aired, and she found herself sharing the small screen with many other big music stars.
"Doing 'Natural Woman' with Ray Charles was so great — that was a career highlight. I loved working with Eddie Rabbit. I danced with Ben Vereen. I sang with Tom Jones, and he was so charismatic, in person and onstage. That was such a magical time. I think I loved the rehearsals more than anything, because you're creating the substance of a show and building how you're going to do it. I really enjoyed that," Carter reminisces.
"And when you think about it, it was really before MTV, or before most people were doing music videos that were theatrical in any way — that were storytelling. We were really ahead of the curve when we did these vignettes. I loved that whole variety thing. I really miss that on television. I wish we could bring that back."
Despite all of Carter's musical achievements, many fans are surprised to learn that she can sing at all and that she still regularly releases music. Carter will always be best known as TV's favorite superheroine, but she is very at peace with that legacy.
"I'm totally OK with it. If I wasn't OK with it, at this point in my life, I would be very miserable!" Carter laughs. In fact, Carter loved Wonder Woman so much that she was "surprised and devastated" when the series was canceled after its 60-episode run ("I didn't know what to do with myself"); she was "so grateful" when director Patty Jenkins "kept the essence of the character alive" in the recent Wonder Woman movie reboots; and she was "very, very sad" and "just didn't get it" when Warner Bros. scrapped plans for Wonder Woman 3.
"Artists' hearts are very tender. We're more sensitive to things. Really, we're just so insecure," Carter confesses. "I had a young girl one time tell me, 'You always seem so confident!' I looked at her and I said, 'Well, I've had a lot of time to perfect looking confident. But it doesn't mean that I am.'" However, even though her music career didn't take off quite like she'd hoped in the '70s and '80s, Carter, at age 72, still dreams of having hit records of her own.
"Of course I do! Of course you want your art to be successful and be received well, and of course you're always disappointed if it isn't. But then you move on to the next creative thing," Carter shrugs. Which brings us to her two new above-mentioned songs, both of which come straight from her tender artist's heart.
"Rise Up" is Carter's Wonder Woman-namechecking political statement, which she stresses is "all very positive. Even though I'm outspoken, I try to write in a way that's not so overwhelmingly political that it can't be heard by all people." However, Carter, who is on the founding board to build the new Smithsonian American Women's History Museum, makes it as crystal-clear as Wonder Woman's famous invisible plane that she's no fan of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and is very worried about what might happen if he wins another term in office.
"I think it's really important as a woman that we never forget, that we do not stand behind a man who publicly demeans women," Carter asserts. "We were in the dark for a long time, with that last [Trump] administration riling people up with hatred. It was terrible. And the truth is, I resent anyone that could vote for a man that assaults women. He assaults women. So, the bottom line is: We have to rise up, and we have to speak."
Carter's other new single showcases her softer side, the personal instead of the political. "Letters From Earth" is a tribute to her late husband, attorney Robert A. Altman, whom she married in 1984 and was with until he died from a rare blood cancer in 2021.
"That song came from a very serious place, but now it seems to have morphed into a kind of comfort for other people who listen to it and think of the ones they have loved in their own lives," Carter muses. "When I listen to that song now myself, I feel a connection [to Altman]. I sang that one in that more intimate way, rather than in a 'professional' way. I feel he can hear it when I play it. I feel that he is glad I shared it."
Looking ahead to a string of new singles she will release throughout 2024, Carter intends to savor every moment, every success, and "really inhale all this stuff," because many of her past career highlights, as wild as they may have been, are hazy now.
"When you're in the middle of it, you forget just how lucky you are," she marvels. "You don't realize how fortunate you are, until you look in the rear view. As we move through our lives, it's important not to forget how amazing everything is and to take your own mental snapshots of those moments, because when you're looking back, those memories aren't as clear. There's something to be said for living in the moment and enjoying your life as it progresses.
"But it was a unique career, I must say," Carter chuckles. "A very unique career."
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