Remarkable albums from the past

‘Broken English’
MARIANNE FAITHFULL
Released: 2 Nov 1979
Seventh studio album

THE GUARDIAN says: “In theory at least, there were more opportune moments in pop history for a forgotten 60s legend to stage a comeback than the late 1970s. Admirably less tolerant than subsequent generations of the idea that the 60s were a matchless cultural high-water mark, punks made a great pantomimic show of disdaining the preceding decade. “No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones/ In 1977,” sang the Clash. And yet the punk generation seemed to make an exception for Marianne Faithfull. McLaren attempted to cast her as Sid Vicious’s junkie mother in The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle. The songs on her 1979 comeback album, Broken English, were premiered at a gig at the Music Machine in London, the bearpit venue where Bob Geldof was punched in the face in the middle of a Boomtown Rats gig and Richard Hell received such a grim reception that Rotten, of all people, took the stage to ask for calm. “Punk,” Faithfull later recalled, “made Broken English possible. The record careers by, its 35 minutes as bracingly full of venom and spite as anything her punk admirers could muster. For Faithfull, it seemed to work as catharsis.” – Full review here.

TURN UP THE VOLUME‘S favorite track: title track BROKEN ENGLISH

Album in full…

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