Spinner

Back to 2011: The Year in Deaths and Breakups

Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex

Roberta Bayley, Redferns

"Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard," said 20-year-old Marianna Joan Elliot-Said, aka Poly Styrene, in the opening seconds of the X-Ray Spex 1977 punk classic 'Oh Bondage, Up Yours.' The original Spex managed only one album and a handful of singles, but this Day-Glo-clad biracial iconoclast emerged as one of the U.K. scene's most unique female voices, paving the way for everyone from the Riot Grrrls to M.I.A.