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Poly Styrene
Marianne Joan Elliott-Said (3 July 1957 – 25 April 2011), known by the stage name Poly Styrene, was an English musician, singer-songwriter, and frontwoman for the punk rock band X-Ray Spex. She is considered a pioneer for the feminist punk movement.
Poly Styrene was born Marianne Joan Elliott-Said in 1957 in Bromley, Kent, and brought up in Brixton, London. Her mother, who raised her alone, was a Scottish-Irish legal secretary. Her father was a Somali-born dock worker, although Poly Styrene used to tell the press that he was a dispossessed Somali aristocrat.
As a teenager, Styrene was a hippie. When she was 15, Styrene ran away from home with £3 in her pocket; she hitchhiked from one music festival to another, staying at hippie crash pads. She went home after she stepped on a rusty nail while bathing in a stream and had to be treated for sepsis.
Styrene recorded her first demo album in 1975, when she was 18 years old. Her manager enlisted Ted Bunting to produce the record.
In 1976, Styrene released her first single under her real name, Mari Elliott. Titled "Silly Billy", it was a reggae track with some ska influences. Her daughter Celeste has called it "similar to Althea and Donna, who she really liked." She co-wrote the B-side "What a Way" with the record's producer, Falcon Stuart. The single came in a GTO Records sleeve.
After watching an early show by the Sex Pistols in an empty hall on Hastings Pier, playing a set of cover songs, she was inspired to put an ad out in music publications for "young punx who want to stick it together" to form a band. From this, she formed X-Ray Spex and became its lead singer, Poly Styrene, a name she chose from the yellow pages. She was described by Billboard as the "archetype for the modern-day feminist punk" because she wore dental braces, rebelled against the archetypal female sex object of the 1970s, sported a gaudy wardrobe, and was of mixed race. She was "one of the least conventional frontpersons in rock history, male or female." X-Ray Spex launched their debut single in 1977.
New York magazine's music journalist Nitsuh Abebe described her singing style with X-Ray Spex as "a bold, keening yelp" and "fierce but fiercely feminine."
After the original line-up of X-Ray Spex broke up in 1979, Poly Styrene recorded a solo album, Translucence, in 1980. The album abandoned X-Ray Spex's loud guitar work for a quieter and more jazzy sound that has since been described as foreshadowing later work by Everything but the Girl. In 1986, she released the EP God's & Godesses [sic] on the Awesome record label. A new-age solo album, Flower Aeroplane, followed in 2004.
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Poly Styrene
Marianne Joan Elliott-Said (3 July 1957 – 25 April 2011), known by the stage name Poly Styrene, was an English musician, singer-songwriter, and frontwoman for the punk rock band X-Ray Spex. She is considered a pioneer for the feminist punk movement.
Poly Styrene was born Marianne Joan Elliott-Said in 1957 in Bromley, Kent, and brought up in Brixton, London. Her mother, who raised her alone, was a Scottish-Irish legal secretary. Her father was a Somali-born dock worker, although Poly Styrene used to tell the press that he was a dispossessed Somali aristocrat.
As a teenager, Styrene was a hippie. When she was 15, Styrene ran away from home with £3 in her pocket; she hitchhiked from one music festival to another, staying at hippie crash pads. She went home after she stepped on a rusty nail while bathing in a stream and had to be treated for sepsis.
Styrene recorded her first demo album in 1975, when she was 18 years old. Her manager enlisted Ted Bunting to produce the record.
In 1976, Styrene released her first single under her real name, Mari Elliott. Titled "Silly Billy", it was a reggae track with some ska influences. Her daughter Celeste has called it "similar to Althea and Donna, who she really liked." She co-wrote the B-side "What a Way" with the record's producer, Falcon Stuart. The single came in a GTO Records sleeve.
After watching an early show by the Sex Pistols in an empty hall on Hastings Pier, playing a set of cover songs, she was inspired to put an ad out in music publications for "young punx who want to stick it together" to form a band. From this, she formed X-Ray Spex and became its lead singer, Poly Styrene, a name she chose from the yellow pages. She was described by Billboard as the "archetype for the modern-day feminist punk" because she wore dental braces, rebelled against the archetypal female sex object of the 1970s, sported a gaudy wardrobe, and was of mixed race. She was "one of the least conventional frontpersons in rock history, male or female." X-Ray Spex launched their debut single in 1977.
New York magazine's music journalist Nitsuh Abebe described her singing style with X-Ray Spex as "a bold, keening yelp" and "fierce but fiercely feminine."
After the original line-up of X-Ray Spex broke up in 1979, Poly Styrene recorded a solo album, Translucence, in 1980. The album abandoned X-Ray Spex's loud guitar work for a quieter and more jazzy sound that has since been described as foreshadowing later work by Everything but the Girl. In 1986, she released the EP God's & Godesses [sic] on the Awesome record label. A new-age solo album, Flower Aeroplane, followed in 2004.
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