nymag.com – By Carl Swanson
The first time Justin Vivian Bond sang a song he thought he’d written was in the second grade in Hagerstown, Maryland. He’d heard, maybe in the family car, Karen Carpenter singing “Long ago, and oh so far away, I fell in love with you before the second show,” and he so identified with the mordant heartache of a groupie singing about a rock star she’d slept with that he dreamt about it that night. At school the next day, he told his teacher he wanted to sing a song he’d composed. He sang that song: “Superstar.”