Each year, when the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) announces a new slate of nominees for induction, the internet comes alive with love and rage. Those of us who care are quick to congratulate our personal favorites should they be tapped. But our list of outrageous snubs usually takes up more cyberspace.
As the RRHOF struggles to matter in the wake of rock & roll’s increasing irrelevance, the debates broaden. If you have been paying attention, you have known for a long time that the impressive building on the banks of Lake Erie no longer confines itself to “rock & roll.”
At least not in a strict sense. The doors are now open to hip-hop, country, and pop acts. Theoretically, these would be “rock adjacent” artists whose brand of music at least flirts with the modern conception of rock. You can decide for yourself whether Whitney Houston or Willie Nelson hit that mark.
This musical artist deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Personally, I have no issue with this drift toward other popular forms of modern music. I am much more disturbed by the overwhelming perception of favoritism tied to Jann Wenner’s leadership of the Hall. That’s a topic for another essay. For now, suffice to say that Wenner has been ousted from the organization he helped build, and that is a very good thing.
Perhaps one day soon, the RRHOF will redress the obvious omissions of vital rock & roll bands like Iron Maiden, Jethro Tull, and Motorhead. I won’t continue on this line because I’m sure you have your own list. Bands like these, along with other rock & roll greats like Paul Rodgers and Ronnie James Dio, already have plenty of champions.
I want to champion a worthy inductee who nobody is talking about. At least not in my neck of the web. Her name at birth was Marianne Elliott. She would come to be known by the stage name she picked out of the Yellow Pages, Poly Styrene.
To date, the RRHOF has inducted 43 artists or bands under the Early Influence label. Poly Styrene should join them.
Actually, Poly would go in under the new name for this category. In 2023, the RRHOF rechristened it as “Musical Influence.” This recognized a significant reality. Rock & roll is about 70 years old now. This designation was originally set up to honor musicians from the pre-rock era who helped lay the groundwork for what would become rock & roll. Most of those performers were born before WWII.
But music keeps moving forward, and though there still may be some worthy inductees from the pre-rock era, we should now single out performers whose entire careers took place during the rock years because they still might have a significant impact on how rock would develop.
A few such acts have been honored. Acts like Gil Scott-Heron, Kraftwerk, and DJ Kool Herc. Perhaps their total output does merit inclusion under the performers label (it's hard to see that logic with Kraftwerk, but so be it), but they deserve recognition as influencers.
I can’t think of anyone who fits this description better than founder and lead vocalist of the early punk band X-Ray Spex, Poly Styrene.
Poly saw the Sex Pistols on her 19th birthday and, in classic DIY style, placed an ad in the paper soon after looking for like-minded souls to start a band. X-Ray Spex had many of the hallmarks of punk. They were loud and fast. Polly could shriek with the best of them.
But they were also, from the very beginning, opening the door for new sounds and new voices in the fledgling genre. Poly had tried her hand at reggae before forming her punk band, and the inclusion of a couple of saxes in her music gave her punk a bit of a ska vibe.
She wrote songs about the society around her – the plastic, consumerist world drawn from the vision of Andy Warhol. Her lyrics were sharp, funny, and thought-provoking. Though she did not identify specifically as a feminist, equality was at the heart of many of her songs.
“Some people think that little girls should seen and not heard – But I think “oh bondage, up yours!”
“Oh, Bondage, Up Yours!” would become an anthem for women as well as for any artist oppressed by a music industry that was overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly white. Poly was neither. As a bi-racial woman in late ‘70s England, she was fighting an uphill battle on all fronts. While most of the punk boys were engaging in angry screaming about politics or beer, Poly was writing about different issues.
“When you look in the mirror, do you see yourself – Do you see yourself on the TV screen – Do you see yourself in the magazine – When you see yourself, does it make you scream?”
Poly’s song “Identity” from their debut album Germfree Adolescents (1978) remains more relevant today than most rock songs written decades later.
Poly fought to be herself. She wore braces. She had a decidedly out-of-step sense of fashion, which she insisted on sharing. She reportedly was angry when EMI slimmed down her image on the Germfree Adolescents album cover.
Still, for a while, she triumphed. Her voice was extraordinary. X-Ray Spex was a quality band, scoring not merely as a punk act but as a pop act as well.
Pressure and substance abuse curtailed X-Ray Spex's early success, and Poly withdrew from music for a bit. But she never really left. Shortly before her death from breast cancer in 2011, she released her final album, Generation Indigo, and it is just as inventive and involving as her early work.
Crucial artists from the punk and post-punk era – from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore to the Raincoats’ Gina Birch – were inspired by Poly. Neneh Cherry has said she decided to become a singer after first hearing Poly.
Had she been a man – a white man – she probably would have followed a career trajectory much like current RRHOF nominee Billy Idol. Their early careers were very similar. Poly Styrene will never be nominated for induction as a performer, and based on her career output, that is appropriate.
But if we’re continuing to expand the parameters of “influence” in the Hall, she should be at the top of that list. As Gina Birch, bass player and founding member of the Raincoats, said, Poly "opened up the box. She gave everyone new tools ... new ideas and new possibilities."