Curated playlist
American punk rock singers
- Iggy PopIggy Pop, born James Newell Osterberg Jr., built a reputation on rolling around in broken glass while a crowd watched. Admirers eventually called him the "Godfather of Punk". His first band sold few records, yet its songs outlasted much of…
- Patti SmithPatti Smith, the American singer, songwriter, poet and author, lost her place in the middle of a song at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm. The date was the 10th of December 2016. She was standing in for Bob Dylan, winner of the…
- Dave GrohlDave Grohl, born David Eric Grohl on the 14th of January 1969, once sat at number one on the modern rock charts for 17 of 18 consecutive weeks. The run stretched from the 26th of October 2002 to the 1st of March 2003. He managed it as a…
- Courtney LoveCourtney Love walked on stage at the Reading Festival on the 26th of August 1994 as the singer of Hole. It was her first public performance since the death of her husband, the Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. MTV called the set "by turns…
- Billie Joe ArmstrongBillie Joe Armstrong was five years old when he recorded a song called 'Look for Love' for a Bay Area label named Fiat Records. A teacher had pushed him to try it. Decades later, the band he fronts, Green Day, has sold over 60 million…
- Hayley WilliamsHayley Williams was 16 years old when her band Paramore released its debut album, All We Know Is Falling, in 2005. Readers of Alternative Press later voted her second in a poll of the five greatest pop-punk vocalists of all time. Yet…
- Debbie HarryDebbie Harry spent 1979 handing out a reminder that she was not her own band. That year Blondie ran a button campaign with a blunt slogan: "Blondie is a group." The pins existed because the public kept confusing the woman at the microphone…
- Ice-TIce-T got his stage name when friends heard him recite novels by Iceberg Slim.
- MGKMGK, born Colson Baker and known for years as Machine Gun Kelly, took his original stage name from a gangster. The nickname belonged to George Kelly Barnes, a criminal of the Prohibition era. The man who borrowed it became a rapper,…
- Belinda CarlisleBelinda Carlisle spent the third day of a London hotel stay in 2005 pacing a room thick with cigarette smoke. She had been awake and using cocaine for most of three days. She looked in a mirror and later said she saw no light and no soul…
- John LydonJohn Lydon, the singer once known as Johnny Rotten, ended the last Sex Pistols concert of the Sid Vicious era with a question. It was January 1978, the stage was San Francisco's Winterland, and he asked the crowd: "Ever get the feeling…