How did X-Ray Spex lead singer Poly Styrene get her name?
Stage names have been commonplace within the music and entertainment industry from its earliest origins. Employed for a variety of reasons, ranging from a desire for anonymity to a need to make an artist’s name more marketable, these made-up monikers often overshadow an artist’s real identity. During the age of punk rock music, stage names were concocted as a means of adding another layer of shock and intrigue into this divisive new style of music and art. Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, for instance, adopted the name Poly Styrene when fronting X-Ray Spex.
The trend for punk artists adopting stage names was arguably started by James Osterberg Jr, who re-Christened himself Iggy Pop after forming The Stooges. Once punk rock arrived on the shores of the UK in 1976, the Sex Pistols were among the first to popularise the adoption of stage names, as John Lydon became Johnny Rotten and Simon Ritchie became Sid Vicious. These names tended to be quite aggressive and overly masculine, much like many of the bands that populated that early scene.
X-Ray Spex were always a little different from the rest of the punk scene. For one, the band featured one of very few prominent women in the early punk scene, in the form of Elliot-Said. The anger of the music quickly descended into hyper-masculine aggression which seemed largely at odds with the original aims of the genre. X-Ray Spex offered a stunning alternative to that, with the band offering diversity both in sound and line-up.
As a result, the band’s frontwoman would have to adopt a fairly unique stage name to set herself apart from the rest. So, as anybody should when looking for something, the songwriter resorted to the Yellow Pages. Skimming through the telephone directory, Elliot-Said was reportedly “looking for a name of the time, something plastic,” to reflect the increasing consumerism within British society at the time.
So, under the plastics section, she eventually landed upon the name Poly Styrene, perfectly encapsulating the synthetic, consumerist nature of society, which was a theme she often drew upon during her songwriting, too. If you look across the material of X-Ray Spex, Styrene penned tracks like ‘Plastic Bag’, ‘The Day The World Turned Day-Glo’, and ‘Germ Free Adolescents’, which reflected her interest and concern surrounding consumer capitalism and the disposable nature of modern life.
As such, Poly Styrene was the perfect stage name for the punk pioneer, acting as a perfect and succinct summation of her style, message and music. However, Styrene kept the name even after the punk movement had largely died off. For her stunning, ethereal debut solo album, Elliott-Said still released the record under the Poly Styrene moniker, speaking to the power and adaptability of that name.
Fittingly, as the songwriter grew older, her stage name only became more relevant as Western society descended further and further into an ad-ridden, consumerist, disposable hellscape. So, when Styrene returned to her punk roots on 2011’s Generation Indigo, her name did not feel at all outdated. In opposition, you could imagine how a middle-aged man still operating under a name like ‘Johnny Rotten’ or ‘Rat Scabies’ might be a little cringe-worthy.
Was Poly Styrene trained as an opera singer?
Although she became known for her scathing assaults on life, society, and inequality in 1970s Britain, Styrene had originally trained to be an opera singer. While there were not many classically trained opera singers within the punk scene, this vocal quality allowed Styrene to embrace more diverse and complex performances within her work with X-Ray Spex. Her opera training is also likely responsible for that distinctive, almost childlike tone in much of her singing – which tends to be more obvious on solo records like Translucence than the material of X-Ray Spex.
Prior to becoming a punk, Styrene had tried her hand at singing pop-reggae music, a popular style in her native area of Brixton during the early-to-mid 1970s. However, after seeing the Sex Pistols on her 19th birthday, it was clear that her true calling was not in pop reggae or opera singing but in the abrasive and defiant world of punk rock.
