Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, or as she was most famously known, Poly Styrene, stands as an Anglo-Somalian icon of creative, fierce, and genius talent. Fronting X-Ray Spex, she redefined punk and paved the way for women, people of colour and a multitude of others in a scene where representation was, and still is lacking.
I can still remember the feeling I had the first time I heard ‘Oh Bondage! Up Yours!’ and the infamous line, ‘ some people think little girls should be seen and not heard, but I think, oh bondage up yours!’, immediately followed by the wild riff of guitars and a blaring saxophone. The raw intensity of her voice, her call to bite back and the way you are thrown head-first into the music, inspired an overwhelming energetic joy in me and millions worldwide. It made me want to write my own music, play in a band and create, but mainly I felt it gave me the freedom to do and be whatever I wanted.
Hailed as the godmother of punk; a vision of curly hair, braces and crazy colours, she brought fun dynamism to the 70s punk scene that was generally darker, more destructive and nihilistic. She was a DIY visionary, creating all the band’s art and lyrics herself in true punk fashion. Yet at the same time, her music and lyrics were so much more than just punk and rebellion, they were about identity, commenting on culture, society and women’s roles. She was witty and intelligent and brought elements of science fiction and weaved dystopian worlds into her work, and in an interview with the publication gal-dem, her daughter Celeste Bell, said:
‘My mother created X-Ray Spex as a musical vehicle for her alter-ego who she saw as a kind of plastic punky princess living in a dystopian future somewhat reminiscent of Huxley’s A Brave New World. She was inspired by postmodernism, science-fiction, and television advertisements. In songs such as ‘Genetic Engineering’, ‘The Day The World Turned Day Glo’ and ‘Arti-i-ficial’ she describes a synthetic, scientifically enhanced world where nature has retreated and consumerism is the state religion.’
The way she presented herself was also something I loved about her, she refused to follow the pop princess archetype, refused to be sexualised and refused to fit in. She was decades ahead of her time as the first woman of colour in punk in the UK, in the way she dressed, in the way she sang and her lyrics. As a half-white, half-Somalian working class teenager living in Jamaican-dominated Brixton, she felt like she didn’t fit in there or with the people around her. Later as she entered the music world and the punk scene she felt the same, inspiring her song ‘Identity’, in which she hints at 70s British youth subculture’s obsession with individuality, and groups like the punks, the goths and the glam rockers emerging. She comments on the hypocrisy of these groups, as in the desperation to be different, each group ended up looking, dressing and acting identically.
Poly Styrene played a huge part in helping me to develop my own identity, how to navigate the world as a woman, particularly a woman in music, and most importantly by putting two fingers up to the predetermined rules and expectations society sets for us.
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