Germ Free Adolescents

Product Information

In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 354 in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. [23] Cover versions and cultural references [ edit ]

In late September 1977, a studio recording of "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" was released as a single. Today, the 45 is regarded as their most enduring artefact, both as a piece of music and as a sort of proto-grrrl catchphrase. [26] [27] Opening with the spoken/screamed line, "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard but I think— oh, bondage, up yours!", the song could be interpreted as a premonition of the riot grrrl movement 15 years later, although Styrene herself insists it was more intended as an anti-consumerist/ anti-capitalist jingle, and was not exclusively feminist in nature. Pelly, Jenn (15 January 2017). "X-Ray Spex: Germfree Adolescents". Pitchfork . Retrieved 15 January 2017.

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Christgau, Robert (26 April 2011). "Poly Styrene, Punk Pioneer, Dies at 53". NPR . Retrieved 23 October 2020. Without Styrene, the group lost its momentum and split up. Hurding and Airport went on to form Classix Nouveaux, while Paul Dean and Rudi Thompson went on to form Agent Orange with Anthony "Tex" Doughty, who would later become a founding member of Transvision Vamp. In an age of burgeoning A.I. and rampant outsourcing, the sci-fi poetry of “Genetic Engineering” is even more prophetic, as Poly declares that “genetic engineering could create the perfect race… could exterminate/introducing worker clones/as our subordinated slave.” Her grim propositions have lost none of their daunting edge. Punks were screaming “NO FUTURE,” and fair enough, but Poly went further, deeper; her songs dared to imagine just how bad hellish normalization could be. And here we are. MercuryPrize (15 September 2014). "FKA twigs Q&A – 2014 Mercury Prize". Archived from the original on 13 December 2021 – via YouTube. The Guardian (November 2007). 1,000 Albums To Hear Before You Die . London. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link)

When we first did the RS 500 in 2003, people were talking about the “death of the album.” The album —and especially the album release — is more relevant than ever. (As in 2003, we allowed votes for compilations and greatest-hits albums, mainly because a well-made compilation can be just as coherent and significant as an LP, because compilations helped shaped music history, and because many hugely important artists recorded their best work before the album had arrived as a prominent format.)Dimery, Robert, ed. (2010). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (revised and updateded.). Universe Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7893-2074-2. Due to this obsession, she sees in a boy “cleanliness,” and is attracted to him for that reason. Cleanliness in this song denotes the expectation of physical and sexual “purity” for women and girls. This could also signify the subject’s age; puberty is often thought of as gross, and society deems bodies and bodily functions as inherently dirty or disgusting. The song hints towards the girl’s abnegation of her body as it is changing and growing. Long-running California punk band NOFX has performed a cover version of Germfree Adolescents live. [24] In public, Poly Styrene and her bandmates put forth a playful image of happy pigs heading to the self-aware synthetic slaughter. But in private, the band’s meteoric rise to fame was starting to weigh on its leader. In 2017, Poly’s daughter, Celeste Bell, wrote in The Guardian, “I wonder if my mum might have had a happier life if she hadn’t had that level of fame,” a question that’s all but answered by this classic introvert statement Poly made in 1978: “You feel all the time that people are draining you, draining off your energy all the time until you think, ‘Blimey, I haven’t got anything left to give. Leave me alone.’” During their first incarnation (1976–1979), X-Ray Spex released five singles and one album. [1] Their 1977 single " Oh Bondage Up Yours!" and 1978 debut album Germfree Adolescents are widely acclaimed as classic punk releases. [sources 1] The band has briefly reformed several times in the 1990s and 2000s.

NOFX – Germ Free Adolescents (X-Ray Spex cover) Lyrics – SongMeanings". SongMeanings . Retrieved 4 July 2018. The album’s focus on feminism, identity issues, and mass consumerism is prophetic in the issues discussed in the 2010s, with the song “Identity” being a particular heavy hitter with lyrics such as Poly Styrene died of spinal and breast cancer on 25 April 2011 in East Sussex, England, at the age of 53. [38] Documentary and biography [ edit ] In July of 1976, Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, a Scottish-Somali girl from London’s inner-city Brixton district, celebrated her 19th birthday by going to see the Sex Pistols. Marianne dropped out of school at age 15, and had spent the last few years drifting between music festivals, crash pads, and recording studios in an attempt to get her music career off of the ground. She had even released a single, a novelty reggae song called “ Silly Billy,” with Donna Summer’s U.K. distributor, GTO Records. But she was frustrated—frustrated with not being taken seriously as a musician, and frustrated by the racism, sexism, and classism that seemed to make achieving her dreams impossible.

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Du Noyer, Paul (1998). Encyclopedia of Albums: 1,000 Best-Ever Albums . Bristol: Dempsey Parr. p.89. ISBN 1-84084-031-5. They aimed their fluorescent bile at the vapidity and sterility of the modern world, specifically the increasingly consumerist nature of society, in classic sax-drenched anthems A spokesperson for Styrene confirmed her death this morning, saying everyone around her was saddened by the news. A full statement is expected later today. The moment I heard that Marianne Elliott-Said, AKA Poly Styrene, had died, I was at band practice. We put on X-Ray Spex and jumped around, screaming along to Identity, Oh Bondage Up Yours! and Germ Free Adolescents. On that day in 2011 we lost one of punk’s greatest heroes and one of the few who really looked and sounded like me. She broke the mould of UK punk stereotypes. She was brown, chubby, weirdly dressed and had braces on her teeth. Even in an era when quirky, abrasive style was all the rage, she stood out.

Oh Bondage Up Yours!" featured on The Roxy London WC2 (24 June 1977: Harvest Records SHSP4069) – No.24 UK Albums Chart [41] Are you ready to fly?". The Guardian. 9 May 2003. Archived from the original on 18 February 2006 . Retrieved 21 June 2021.On 28 April 2008, Poly Styrene gave a performance of "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" in front of more than 10,000 people at the Love Music Hate Racism free concert in Victoria Park, East London. [ citation needed] BOFH: Oh Bondage Up Yours! (article demonstrating the use of the song title as a catchphrase)". The Register . Retrieved 23 May 2008. Oh Bondage Up Yours!" / "I Am a Cliché" (September 1977: Virgin Records, VS 189); also released as a 12" single (VS 189–12)