Punk Legend Poly Styrene Dead at 53

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Poly Styrene, the frontwoman for the classic punk rock band X Ray Spex, has died at the age of 53. Styrene, whose real name was Marianne Elliot-Said, had been battling both breast and spinal cancer.

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Inspired by an early Sex Pistols gig, Styrene formed the X Ray Spex when she was 18. The band went on to record a string of five singles – including the enduring punk anthem "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" – and one highly influential full-length album, Germ Free Adolescents, before breaking up in 1979. The band briefly reunited in 1995 for an unsuccessful second album titled Conscious Consumer.

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Outside of X Ray Spex, Styrene released a small handful of solo recordings inspired by her Hare Krishna faith, including her relatively mellow debut Translucence in 1980 and a New Age album titled Flower Aeroplane in 2004. Her final album, the hard rocking Generation Indigo, was released last month.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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