Marianne Joan Elliott-Said (3 July 1957 – 25 April 2011), known by the stage name Poly Styrene, was an British 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.
In 2007, Styrene was invited to the Concrete Jungle festival in Camber Sands by her friend John Robb; Styrene and the festival's organiser, Symond Lawes, agreed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of X-Ray Spex's debut album, Germfree Adolescents. The celebrations included a live show on 6 September 2008 at the Camden Roundhouse, which was sold out. A live album and DVD recording of this event, Live @ The Roundhouse London 2008, was released in November 2009 on the Year Zero label by Future Noise Music.
She made a guest appearance at the 2008 30th anniversary concert of Rock Against Racism in Victoria Park, London, performing "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" with guest musicians Drew McConnell and David "Flash" Wright. That same year, she dueted with John Robb on a remix of Goldblade's "City of Christmas Ghosts".
In March 2009, Styrene joined other members of PRS for Music in criticising Google for allegedly not paying a fair share of royalties to musicians. This followed Google's removal of millions of videos from YouTube because of a royalties dispute with the organisation.
She released a free download of "Black Christmas" in November 2010. Inspired by a Los Angeles killing spree by a man dressed as Santa Claus, "Black Christmas" was written in collaboration with her daughter, Celeste.
Poly Styrene released a solo album titled Generation Indigo, produced by Martin Glover, in March 2011 via Future Noise Music. "Virtual Boyfriend" was the first single from Generation Indigo released on 21 March 2011 via Spinner Music alongside the launch of her new website, and featured an animated promotional video directed by Ben Wheele. The album received critical acclaim, including a perfect score in Artrocker magazine and an 8/10 in The Daily Telegraph. It was released in the US on 24 April 2011, the day before her death.
"Ghoulish" was the first posthumous single to be released from Generation Indigo, and was accompanied by a remix from Hercules and Love Affair.
The band U2 paid tribute to Styrene during the "HerStory" video tribute to notable women in 2017 for the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree during a performance of "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" from the band's 1991 album Achtung Baby. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Poly Styrene at number 195 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
In 1978, after a gig in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, Styrene had a vision of a pink light in the sky and felt objects crackling when she touched them. Thinking she was hallucinating, her mother took her to the hospital. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1991.
In 1983, Styrene was initiated into the Hare Krishna movement and recorded at their recording studios while living as a devotee at Bhaktivedanta Manor. She lived as a Hare Krishna convert in Hertfordshire and London from 1983 to 1988. Styrene was a vegetarian.
In 1995, Styrene's solo work was put on hold when she suffered a fractured pelvis after being knocked down by a fire engine.