Poly Styrene, R.I.P.

Sad news to report today. Poly Styrene, frontwoman for X-Ray Spex and influential punk rock icon, died this week after a bout with cancer. She was only fifty-three. From PopMatters:

She always was the incisive cultural chronicler and commentator from the very beginning. X-Ray Spex’s 1978 album Germ Free Adolescents was an iconic punk release, anticipating and influencing greatly the future riot girl movement as well as being one of punk’s and late ‘70s Britain’s most important records. Poly Styrene’s music was always smart and fun in equal doses, making listeners think about gender politics, while shaking their booty and enjoying her marvelous wit. One of the great women of popular music has passed and will be greatly missed.

Poly Styrene also broke barriers by being a WOC in England's mostly white, male, punk rock scene:

Here's the thing about the 1970s British and American punk scenes: they were every bit as misogynistic and race-exclusive as the society they claimed to stand counter to. And Styrene didn't look the part of a punk -- at the time, she was a mixed-race not-skinny avowed-feminist teenager with braces and day-glo old lady clothes, who later struggled with mental health issues. But Styrene embraced her role as punk's conscience, both as critic and role model; she screamed down consumerism and magazine culture both inside and outside the scene, with a bullying shriek still heard in singers like latter-day feminist icon Kathleen Hanna. (Colorlines )

Says tumblr downlo:

It is unfortunate (but perhaps unsurprising) that Styrene never achieved the same levels of fame that Patti Smith and Debbie Harry did. Besides being a feminist icon, she was also anti-racist and an activist and was a much needed source of pushback against the white male hegemony in punk and rock music in general.

I don't have anything poignant to add other than Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex were a big part of my punk rock education, and I can remember the excitement I felt finally scoring a cut-out bin copy of Germ Free Adolescents, and later playing that album, feeling like I was being let in on a special secret. At the time it was one of those records that was so hard to find in my uncool Midwest town, and that made its mythos grow. The real secret was really no secret at all: women can survive, thrive even, in punk's boys' club. Poly Styrene is just one of reasons this blog exists today, or that I could have even dreamed it could.

RIP Poly: