Marianne Faithfull

Quote:It’s an understatement to say that the decade preceding Marianne Faithfull’s defining 1979 album ‘Broken English’ was a deeply traumatic one for her.

Ending her relationship with Mick Jagger in 1970, losing custody of her son and consequently attempting suicide, by 1971 both Faithfull’s personal life and professional career had become foreign lands to her, languishing on the streets of Soho in London as she battled cocaine and heroin. In the years that followed, records like her country and western attempt ‘Dreamin’ My Dreams’ (1976) failed to redefine her.

Marianne’s saving grace, however, was yet to come. Moving into a Chelsea squat with future-husband Ben Brierly (The Vibrators), 1977’s punk explosion shattered the Marianne that Swinging London had fictionalised. Faithfull, the doe-eyed English rose with a wispy fringe and coquettish vocals, was finally breaking out of her cage. Whimsical melodies were detonated on the eve of the 1980s with new-wave synthesizers and gutsy lyrics. Worldly, deep-pitched and fearless, what she created was aptly called ‘Broken English’ and its unique sound became, in her own words, “the masterpiece”.

As the staccato-spitting ‘Why’d Ya Do It’ affirms, it was certainly a controversial masterpiece, slicing eardrums with stinging lyrics that makes Madonna’s entire career look like a skip around Walt Disney World. “‘Why’d ya do it,’ she said / ‘Why’d you spit on my snatch? / Are we out of love now, is this just a bad patch?’” Faithfull snarls, ferociously in command of her own identity.

It’s a song that still sparks controversy in 2014, not least for its re-appropriation of a word that can still tease sharp intakes of breath: “Every time I see your dick I see her c*nt in my bed,” Faithfull purges. Here she seizes the misogynistic slang of female oppression, breaks it and remakes it. The word is Faithfull’s now, repurposed into a lyric of defiant strength. Broken English, indeed…