Marianne Faithfull

Rarely has a voice audibly illustrated the full life of a singer quite like that of Marianne Faithfull. Having helped shepherd the mid-’60s British invasion of America’s pop charts, the singer, songwriter, and actor eventually bloomed into an artist for the ages. The first act of her unlikely yet spectacular career began in 1964, when a 17-year-old Faithfull was spotted by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who produced her Jagger/Richards-composed hit “As Tears Go By.” After a string of folkcentric albums, ending with 1967’s Love in a Mist, Faithfull spent the next decade struggling with addiction and other health problems before returning with the 1976 country album Dreamin’ My Dreams. Three years later, the second act of her career began in earnest with the release of the emotionally raw and critically acclaimed Broken English, which showcased Faithfull’s ravaged voice to brilliant New Wave advantage on songs like “Why’d Ya Do It?” while on “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” that hard-earned wisdom is put to immaculate use, as she becomes the outraged narrator of a domestic tragedy. She found an especially sympathetic producer in Hal Willner, who facilitated her reinvention as a jazz and blues singer on 1987’s Strange Weather and four other albums spotlighting her interpretive brilliance. In 2021, after recovering from a near-fatal bout of COVID-19, Faithfull released her 21st album, She Walks in Beauty, containing recitations of her favorite Romantic poetry over the music of Warren Ellis, Brian Eno, and others. Faithfull passed away in 2025 at age 78.