Q Lazzarus (Diane Marie Luckey, 1960–2022) was an American singer whose deep contralto powered Goodbye Horses (1988), immortalized in The Silence of the Lambs. She spent decades out of the spotlight driving a bus in New York before a 2024 documentary revived her story and unearthed archival recordings. Find Q Lazzarus vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
Diane Marie Luckey, performing as Q Lazzarus, was born in Trenton, New Jersey on September 12, 1960. She is best known for her 1988 single Goodbye Horses, written and produced by William Garvey. The song became iconic for its use in Jonathan Demme's 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs (in the iconic dance scene featuring Buffalo Bill / Jame Gumb) and subsequent cultural lore. Despite the song's cultural staying power across multiple decades, she remained obscure as a recording artist - Goodbye Horses being her only widely-known recording, with the 1988 EP Goodbye Horses her primary release. She worked as a bus driver in New York City across multiple decades after her brief recording career and refused interviews for 30+ years. She died on July 19, 2022 at age 61. Her 2024 posthumous documentary Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus (directed by Eva Aridjis-Fuentes, daughter of poet Homero Aridjis) brought new attention to her unrecognized career and archival recordings that were never released during her lifetime.
Q Lazzarus's sound combines synth-pop, post-punk, new wave, electronic, dark wave, and dance-pop with her distinctive deep contralto vocal delivery and atmospheric synthesizer-driven production drawing on classic 1980s synth-pop and post-punk traditions.
Original Sleeping Bag and Mercury pressings of the Goodbye Horses 12-inch single are foundational collector items with collector premiums. The 2024 Sacred Bones Records documentary OST has been.
Listeners new to Q Lazzarus typically start with Goodbye Horses (1988) and the 2024 documentary OST.
