A Comprehensive Guide to Prince on the Anniversary of ‘1999’

Though it was his fifth album, “1999” put Prince on the map. Shondaland celebrates the legend he became — and always will be — with a retrospective of his incredible career.

What becomes a music legend? A multitude of awards? The ability and agility to play all your own instruments? A commanding stage presence? A career of sold-out tours and a generation of fans? Masterful and infectious writing, for himself and other artists? Hundreds of songs that explore everything from sex and love to the end days to even the complicated music business, with an intense magnetism? Prince had all of this and more — indeed, a legend who sold more than 100 million albums during his lifetime and who, even after he passed in April 2016, sold more music than any other artist that year.

Prince used his formidable talent to etch his work into the zeitgeist, forever to be savored as a celebration of love, horniness, spirituality, equality, and his unique ideas of exalted living. A tireless virtuoso who could do splits in heels while executing a flawlessly innovative 20-minute guitar solo, he released 42 studio albums during his too-short life and fought relentlessly for his rights as an artist along the way. His accolades, of course, are endless: He won something like 32 awards, including seven Grammys (with more than 42 nominations), an Oscar (for Best Original Song Score for Purple Rain), four MTV Video Music Awards, and a Golden Globe. And lest we forget, Prince also garnered countless American Music Awards and nominations, 11 ASCAP Pop Music Awards, inductions into various Halls of Fame — the man was basically the Mozart of our time.

Prince’s trajectory may have seemed predetermined, but his eventual ascension to becoming a musical icon had to start somewhere. One moment that arguably served as the springboard to what would become his breathtaking career occurred 40 years ago today on October 27, 1982, when his fifth studio album, 1999, was released. Though Prince already boasted hits like “Controversy” and “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” 1999 ushered Prince’s special brand of racy funk out of the R&B charts and into the mainstream. It was his first top 10 album, reaching No. 9 on the Billboard 200, and came in at No. 5 in its year-end roundup of albums. The success of singles like “1999” (No. 12 on the Billboard chart) and “Little Red Corvette” (No. 4 on the Billboard chart) changed the momentum of his career, setting Prince on a course toward the stratosphere. Even after Prince tragically passed away on April 21, 2016, 1999 recharted on Billboard and made it to No. 7, a higher position than when the album first charted.

To celebrate the man and the catalog of music he left behind, we bring you a brief overview of his brilliant and sadly truncated career.

Precocious beginnings

A proud Gemini born on June 7, 1958, Prince Rogers Nelson (yes, that was his actual first name) was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a hometown he cherished until his passing — he once said, “The cold keeps the bad people out.” At only 5 feet 1 inch, a young Nelson loved basketball and played in high school. It’s said his musical ability was preternatural, and he eventually learned to master 18 different instruments. As aspiring musicians are wont to do, he made demos, scored a manager, and shopped his sound around to labels. At just 19, Prince signed with Warner Brothers, beginning what would be a tumultuous relationship he’d struggle with for the next 18 years. For his first album, Prince refused an assigned producer and insisted he do it himself.

The birth of the artist known as Prince

His debut record, For You, was released in 1978 and featured nine tracks that Prince produced, arranged, composed, and performed — as impressive as it gets for a debut artist. His namesake record, Prince, followed, with the hit single “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and the original version of “I Feel for You,” later covered by Chaka Khan. Glancing across these record covers — all portraits of him — the evolution of Prince’s relationship with provocation begins to take shape.

While For You and Prince only hinted at a sultry, sexualized artist, the cover of his next album, 1980’s Dirty Mind, featured Prince in nothing but a blazer, thigh-high heeled boots, and black underwear. Every track oozed sex, with six songs marked “E” for explicit except for, ironically, “Head,” which is a celebratory anthem about the act.

Prince, Performing in Detroit, Michigan in 1980.

Leni Sinclair//Getty Images

Controversy, the record that followed, integrated deeper questioning not only about sex but also sexuality and identity. On the album’s title track, Prince pontificates, “I just can’t believe all the things people say/Am I Black or white?/Am I straight or gay?/Do I believe in God? Do I believe in me?” He concludes by reciting the Lord’s Prayer over his unique brand of funk, new wave, and synth-pop, calling for a nonjudgmental society: “People call me rude/I wish we all were nude/I wish there was no Black and white/I wish there were no rules.” Libidinous jams like “Sexuality,” “Private Joy,” and “Jack U Off” keep the party going, but “Ronnie, Talk to Russia” reflects an almost punk, snarling, guitar-driven awareness of impending nuclear war — reflecting a cognizance of the times that would pervade Prince’s next few albums.

1999 and becoming a household name

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you/I only want you to have some fun,” Prince coos over an electronic voice modulator as the beat kicks into the title track of 1999, his fifth studio album. “1999” is a hopped-up funk jam, but it’s also an exuberant anti-nuclear protest song: “I was dreaming when I wrote this/Forgive me if it goes astray/But when I woke up this morning, could’ve sworn it was judgment day/The sky was all purple/There were people running everywhere, trying to run from destruction/You know I didn’t even care.” Written in 1982 at the height of the Cold War, the track proved to be a pivotal record that inspired us all to dance and cut up, just in case, you know, we were all blown to smithereens. Nearly 20 years later, the song found a new, if obvious, resonance when the entire world was fixated on what would happen when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000, ushering in a new millennium — and all those Y2K fears.

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But back in 1982, the message penetrated Gen X anxiety and ethos so much that the album sold more than 4 million copies, with both critics and fans devouring a pounding, percussive sensibility driven by synths and drum machines, which would become the blueprint of a groove-heavy Minneapolis sound that would prevail over the airwaves for the next decade. Prince also became an MTV mainstay, with the all-music, all-the-time channel (remember those days?) playing “1999” and what would become Prince’s first top 10 hit, “Little Red Corvette,” on loop. From November 1982 to April 1983, Prince took the album on what was then his longest-running tour, the 1999 Tour, which stopped in almost 80 cities across the United States.

Purple Rain and Prince’s parade of hits

If 1999 brough Prince into the mainstream, it was Purple Rain — both his sixth studio album and the accompanying feature film — that affirmed Prince as an icon when it was released in 1984. The album would eventually sell a staggering 25 million copies worldwide and become the best-selling feature film soundtrack of all time. The film is said to be a somewhat autobiographical dramatization of his life, and every track is etched into the annals of pop culture, including “Let’s Get Crazy,” “When Doves Cry,” and of course, “Purple Rain.” His band, the Revolution, also jelled during this time, but every success comes with at least a little setback: the subject matter of the Purple Rain track “Darling Nikki”— a song about a girl Prince met in a hotel lobby “masturbating with a magazine” — ticked off Tipper Gore, wife of then-Senator Al Gore, so much that her ire and campaign against the song is what eventually led to Parental Advisory stickers being placed on albums with explicit lyrics.

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For all his flamboyant self-expression, however, Prince was notoriously shy. In 1985, it’s said he was invited to join the recording of “We Are the World” — the massively successful fundraising track recorded by a who’s who of celebs who made up the supergroup U.S.A. for Africa — but he declined. Still, he remained prolifically productive, driven to release roughly an album a year until his passing. After Purple Rain, Prince turned around and gave us another No. 1 album, Around the World in a Day, which veered away from his heavy funk and moved more toward blatant pop psychedelia. The album spawned hits like “Raspberry Beret” and “Pop Life,” and it was also the first record released under Prince’s own label, Paisley Park, which was distributed by Warner Brothers.

But fans loved the sexier side of Prince, so the following year, he released the critically acclaimed Parade, which reached No. 3 on the Billboard chart and featured the huge, high-octave hit “Kiss.” The track served as part of the soundtrack to Prince’s second film, Under the Cherry Moon, a romantic film about a couple of gigolos that was panned by critics — though it did feature the debut of eventual Oscar-nominated actress Kristin Scott Thomas.

Soundtracking the times

Despite obvious commercial success as a musician and artist, throughout his career, Prince was undoubtedly dedicated to making the music he felt like making when he wanted to make it, and was always unpredictable in his topical explorations. Following Parade, Prince released Sign o’ the Times, which reached No. 6 on the Billboard chart in 1987. The title track was a time capsule of a hit that addressed man’s propensity for self-destruction via societal pain points like the AIDS crisis, gun laws, mass murder, and pervasive crack addiction, and mentions the space shuttle Challenger explosion. It also gave us hits like “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” “U Got the Look” (with Sheena Easton), and “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” He pared down his instrumentation on the album, often favoring a simple drum machine, and at this point, he’d dissolved the Revolution, though he continued to work with guitarist Wendy Melvoin and keyboardist Lisa Coleman, who both appeared on the album and still work together to this day.

Prince plays his Sign o The Times concert at the Palais Omnisports in Paris on June 13, 1987.

FG/Bauer-Griffin//Getty Images

While Sign o’ the Times would go on to be Prince’s most critically acclaimed record — a film of his tour supporting it was also heavily praised — toward the end of the decade, Prince put out Lovesexy, which, in its contemporary R&B explorations of themes of good versus evil, vacillated between incredibly bright and optimistic to slightly dense and obtuse. It was largely met with mixed reviews, with only a single commercially successful track, “Alphabet St.” Follow-up singles “Glam Slam” and “I Wish U Heaven” didn’t even chart.

Even so, Prince pounced on an unexpected opportunity. As a kid, he used to play the Batman theme on the piano, a tale that reportedly led to Prince being tapped to write the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film. It was Prince's 11th studio album and his first foray into soundtracking for a film he didn’t make — and fans ate it up. The album was No. 1 on the chart for six weeks, and “Batdance,” composed of film dialogue samples set to trademark Prince grooves, was his first No. 1 single since “Kiss.” Though Prince’s music continued to be featured in many films throughout the decades, including Risky Business, Happy Feet, and Pretty Woman, he’d go on to compose only one more soundtrack for a non-Prince film, Girl 6, a 1996 Spike Lee film about a phone sex operator.

The ’90s

The ’90s were something of a transitional period for Prince, both businesswise and personally. 1990’s Graffiti Bridge found Prince assembling a new band, the New Power Generation, or NPG, who also recorded the soundtrack for the Graffiti Bridge film that he released the same year. Though critics loved the album, it didn’t spawn a huge single. Prince had better luck with 1991’s Diamonds and Pearls, whose hits — like “Gett Off” and “Cream” — led to Prince signing, at the time, the biggest record contract ever, with Warner Brothers, allowing him to release an album a year for six years, with a $10 million advance per record, a whopping 25 percent of the royalties, and the establishment of his Paisley Park as a joint venture instead of an imprint. However, things quickly soured with the label. According to Billboard, Prince wanted to put out records whenever the urge struck him, even if they were only three songs long. Warner Brothers pushed back, setting up frequent tête-à-têtes between Prince and the label about who ultimately controlled his music.

As a result of the tension with Warner Brothers, Prince, on his next album, Love Symbol, changed his name, though not to another moniker but rather a Mercury-meets-Venus-meets-Mars-esque glyph symbol that befitted his long-established explorations with binaries in sexuality. In a statement, Prince said, “It is an unpronounceable symbol whose meaning has not been identified. It’s all about thinking in new ways, tuning in 2 a new free-quency,” but in reality, he just wanted to stick it to the label. Hard to market and write about in the press, “the artist formerly known as Prince,” as he was called, saw slumping record sales and plenty of backlash. Love Symbol and his following albums, 1994’s Come and The Black Album, marked both the height of Prince’s dispute with Warner Brothers and a continued lack of interest from fans as Prince tried to fulfill the terms of his contract with less-than-enthused label albums.

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But by 1996, Prince ended his distribution deal with Warner Brothers and won the rights to all of his master recordings, and in 1996 released a record called Emancipation to celebrate. He also resumed the use of his name, which led to the launch of his own label NPG. During this time, Prince became notoriously reclusive, recording at his home studio Paisley Park in Minneapolis and refusing to be interviewed. But he was writing and recording on his own terms, and, with NPG, Prince would go on to release 22 more albums, most devoid of singles or hits, given that he spent the first 10 years of the 2000s releasing some of his own music online to subscribers instead of opting for a record deal. Nevertheless, Prince would still collaborate with established artists like Q-Tip and Kate Bush, as well as continue to experiment with his sound, implementing horns, smooth R&B, and heavier guitars into songs that were still undeniably Prince.

Ever the musicologist

The early 2000s saw Prince take experimentation to places he hadn’t quite gone before, with 2001’s The Rainbow Children getting lost in some jumbled jazz, and 2003’s N.E.W.S. leaning far too deep into instrumental meanderings. But in 2004, Prince returned in true Prince fashion. He opened the Grammys with Beyoncé, performing a medley of hits. He was elected into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and, later in the year, at his induction, delivered a searing guitar solo in tribute to George Harrison on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Prince, ever the one to buck industry rules, also released Musicology in a one-off NPG deal with Columbia Records (he would go on to release one-off records with EMI, Arista, Universal, and even Warner Brothers). He reverted to his old-school tastes, and the record reestablished what we always loved about Prince — the funk, the psych-pop, as well as the pointed references to society, the Bible, war, and corruption in a post-9/11 world — and eventually reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 2000, becoming his most successful album since Diamonds and Pearls.

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Musicology would go on to earn five Grammy nominations and two wins, for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance for “Musicology,” and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for “Call My Name.” He toured extensively, playing for a grand total of 1.47 million fans, which was the highest-grossing tour that year. The momentum of the album would last for years, with Prince performing the halftime show at the 2007 Super Bowl in Miami, putting on one of the most memorable performances ever in heels. In 2010, Time named Prince one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

The final days

While things slowed down for Prince after Musicology, in his final year Prince put out two albums, Hit n Run Phase One and Hit n Run Phase Two, which were available to stream on Tidal before being released on CD. Ever the collaborative guru, he also dedicated himself to cultivating young artists, like one of his backup singers, Judith Hill, and a young Lizzo at Paisley Park.

In support of Hit n Run, Prince began to tour in early 2016 but stopped after a couple of months due to bouts with the flu and walking pneumonia. It is said he lost consciousness on a private flight to Minneapolis on April 15, 2016, after which the plane had to make an emergency landing. A week later, Prince died due to an accidental fentanyl overdose at 57. Friends have said Prince suffered from chronic back and hip pain and often took prescription painkillers, and it was reported that the pills he took on April 21, 2016, were laced with the deadly drug.

Today, Prince’s home recording studio, Paisley Park, has been transformed into a museum that houses his archives. Though we mourn the loss of Prince to this day, he left behind a body of work so extensive and unique, we will certainly continue to discover and celebrate the music he gave us for decades to come.

How Our Favorite Songs Can Save Us

Like Max on “Stranger Things,” we love music that provides a pressure valve for the unspoken emotions we carry.

Thanks to Stranger Things, Kate Bush’s 1985 song “Running Up That Hill” was immortalized for a new generation of listeners to the tune of $2.3 million in streaming royalties, and topped the Billboard Global charts for weeks. It was used repeatedly and artfully throughout season four of the series, culminating in a powerful scene where Max, poised to be Vecna’s next victim, is saved from certain doom by slapping on her Walkman headphones and blasting the song on loop. During a crucial moment, the song reminds her who she is and of all the love in her life before the self-doubt inflicted by trauma could leave her open to the evil machinations of a soul-sucking entity.

The kids of Hawkins came to understand the power of music that moves us and harnessed it to empower their friend. It’s a global example of a song putting us in a certain sort of psychological and emotional state, says musicologist Nolan Gasser, a pianist, composer, and the author of Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste.

Similarly, the music we love can help fend off the scary monsters plaguing our minds.

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Almost 40 years ago, listening to artists like Bush certainly did that for weirdos like me. We weren’t cheerleaders who wore Reeboks, like Chrissy in Stranger Things. Like Max, we wore Vans before it was cool, tuned the world out by blaring what eventually became known as alternative music on our headphones, and used Ouija boards to reach out beyond our realities, demystify the scary unknown, and make sense of the “otherness” we were constantly reminded of by others.

When Kate Bush played on my Walkman, I didn’t care about my dysfunctional family dynamic, or that I made $3 per hour in a musty library shelving books for hours on end, or that I struggled to connect with like minds in my high school. Her music, and the music of other alternative artists, assured me there were others out there who questioned the world like I did, who could love like I did, who pondered and made art the way I did, using music and lyrics as a vehicle to express joy, or lust, or pain, or confusion in a way that resonated deeply with me.

Music was — and still is — the artistic language I use to process my emotions. It’s such a powerful art form because it resonates with us on many levels all at once, says Gasser.

“The soundtrack of our lives is forged by many different inputs, including the culture we grow up in and the kind of music we’re exposed to — the technical term is called enculturation,” he says. “That is the way that our brain understands that certain music is our language. Max from Stranger Things loved a song from the ’80s that was [released] at a time when she grew up. One reason it resonated with her is it was a part of her natural environment.”

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Gasser continues, “Another [thing to notice] is [that] we come to own the music we listen to in formative years, from 12 to 18, or 20. When we identify with a song or body of music during that time in our lives, it becomes a really great tool by which to claim our independence and identity. So, when Max listens to the Kate Bush song, it clearly spoke to her on almost a developmental level and how she defines herself.”

Of course, music doesn’t need to be from your formative years to provide you with a cathartic experience or, as Gasser says, “become yours.” Here’s another personal example, for instance: Seven years of intermittent, excruciating chronic pain left me in need of yet another spinal surgery — my fourth. Before doctors operate perilously close to your spinal cord, you have to sign many documents absolving them of responsibility if you, say, die or become disabled. It’s utterly terrifying.

To top it off, I literally had to put one foot in front of the other, walk into the operating theater, and plop myself down on the table, surrendering my throat to the surgeons. Luckily, they blasted music in that operating theater: “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence and the Machine rang out as I was put to sleep. I liked the song, but suddenly it hit differently, lyrically and musically. It became an anthem of strength and resilience I could cling to when I needed it the most. Years later, I can’t hear that song without really feeling it because it was the soundtrack to such a pivotal moment in my life.

Science has long supported the idea that music has a tremendous potential to heal us emotionally. “Going way back to the ancient Greeks, it was understood the power that music has [in terms of] healing and, today, what we call our subjective well-being,” Gasser explains. “A lot of it just has to do with the process of listening to music and being able to follow the music in real time. It sends off endorphins, dopamine, and positive neurotransmitters flood our brains and our systems.”

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He adds that it’s scientifically been proved that the music we love lowers our heart rate and blood pressure. “If somebody is dealing with a difficult personal issue, like a diagnosis of ill health, actively listening to music they love can be as powerful as 10 milligrams of morphine,” Gasser says. “That’s a pretty powerful pain reliever.”

Interestingly enough, sad or melancholy music can actually make us feel good even if we are unhappy and forlorn. “Going way back to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, achieving a state of melancholia was almost a goal of music because it’s a safe space to experience sadness or to experience deep emotion,” Gasser says. “Sad music can be a safe place to feel deeply. Even chemically, when we listen to minor harmonies, or a slower tempo, or just a more lyrical, expressive melody, there’s a hormone called prolactin, which is released into the bloodstream. It’s the same hormone that is released during lactation, and it sends off all of these positive endorphins into the brain to release this hormone.”

The ability that music has to help us process our emotions is one of its greatest gifts, says Gasser. “When we feel deeply, not anger at the television or sadness at something that’s happening, this sort of warmth of emotion music brings on makes us feel good and actually is good for us,” he says. “And music is really one of those things that can trigger feelings deeply as much as anything else can.” Music has certainly been one of the biggest gifts of my life. The most beautiful thing? It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

Poly Styrene Still Deserves to Be Heard

With the punk rock pioneer now immortalized in her daughter Celeste Bell’s biopic, “I Am a Cliché,” here’s why you should get to know Poly’s music and her story.

“Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard
But I think, ‘Oh, bondage, up yours!’
One-two-three-four!”
— X-Ray Spex, “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!”

Though her late-’70s punk band, X-Ray Spex, released but a handful of infectious singles and two albums, including the seminal Germfree Adolescents, lyricist, singer, songwriter, and feminist Poly Styrene’s influence springs eternal through the countless artists she’s inspired, both during her life and after her passing. An impassioned dervish in braces and Day-Glo, Poly — who designed all of her clothing and the band’s logos and album covers — understood full well what branding yourself meant before there was such a thing as branding yourself. And she did it all with no regard for the male gaze.

Like many prophetic artists, Poly’s tumultuous life was driven by her sensitivity, creativity, and the complex, heartbreaking, and triumphant experiences she endured to make her mark on the world. The first woman of color to front a successful rock band in the U.K., Poly was born Marianne Elliott-Said in the late ’50s to a Scottish-Irish mother and a Somali father. She was raised in the gritty Brixton section of London and, because she was biracial, was cruelly and consistently made to feel like an outsider from a very young age. At around 19, she assumed the identity of Poly Styrene, formed X-Ray Spex, and busted into the British punk scene, her unique voice amplifying cerebral poetry that tackled postmodernism, sexism, and consumerism.

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Tragically, it wasn’t long before the frenetic punk life triggered and worsened her symptoms of bipolar disorder, leading to a series of nervous breakdowns and hospitalizations that led Poly to opt out of the music business in her mid-20s, soon after her daughter, Celeste Bell, was born.

Poly Styrene died of cancer in 2011 at the age of 53, but Bell has become the gatekeeper of her legacy with Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché, a powerful, award-winning documentary she co-wrote, co-directed, narrates, and appears in.

Using ample archive footage of Poly, Bell retraces her mother’s footsteps to tell her story, while punk and post-punk luminaries like singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry, journalist Vivien Goldman, designer Vivienne Westwood, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, and Bikini Kill/Le Tigre’s Kathleen Hanna lend their voices to connect the dots of Poly’s influence and experience.

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Ruth Negga almost eerily assumes the voice of Poly, reading excerpts from the singer’s journals and lyrics. The actress joined the project after literally running into Bell in the street. “We ended up chatting and had some drinks. It was really great because it turned up that she was a fan of my mum,” Bell explains. “She found my mum to be an inspirational character. We needed a voice different from mine to include all my mum’s diary entries and represent her voice, and the first person that came to my mind was Ruth.”

The film was the natural evolution after Dayglo: The Poly Styrene Story, a book Bell published in 2019 with fellow writer Zoë Howe. While rifling through her mother’s archives and ephemera, Bell realized there were many people who might relate to various aspects of her story. “Being biracial at a time when there were very few biracial children and it was really frowned upon, my mother experienced a lot of direct racial abuse and violence, and it was very, very difficult,” Bell tells Shondaland on a call from London. “She had this feeling of being an outsider and kind of an outcast in society. When you feel like that, obviously it can be traumatic, and it was — but it can also fuel some anger. My mom was able to channel her anger, but she also had this wonderful, unique perspective of society because she was kind of on the outside. Her writing with social themes really set her apart from the other punks of that generation. She was kind of on another level in terms of her lyrical output.”

Talk about being ahead of her time and on another level — songs like “I Am a Poseur” could be construed as a psychic prediction of today’s obsession with social media:

“I am a poseur and I don’t care, I like to make people stare
I am a poseur and I don’t care, I like to make people stare
Exhibition is the name, voyeurism is the game
Stereoscopic is the show, viewing time makes it grow
Grow, grow, grow, grooow
I am a poseur and I don’t care, I like to make people stare
I am a poseur and I don’t care, I like to make people stare
My facade is just a fake, shock horror no escape
Sensationalism for the feed, caricatures are what you breed
Breed, breed, breed, breeeed”

Remember, this song was written in the late ’70s. “There were these really important themes relevant to today,” Bell says, aptly describing her mother’s lyrics as “dystopian fiction in 2-to-3-minute punk rock songs.” She continues, “My mother was creating a whole world, and Poly Styrene was a character. She was able to make predictions about where things would end up, and of course her predictions were really accurate. She was one of those people who could pick up on trends and see where they were going. Maybe in another life, she would’ve been a trend forecaster, whether they were trivial things like fashion or when it was geopolitics and scientific advances.”

Though Poly was a punk pioneer, Bell says her mother was more of a hippie at heart. “A lot of her ideas about natural living, going back to the land, those are the things that really informed her to a large extent. A lot of her critique of consumerism came from those early experiences where she was in communities rejecting the norms. She was not ‘anti’ anything. She was just observing what was happening and remarking on it. But she didn’t have any solutions. She really disliked preachy lyrics.”

Poly Styrene

Falcon Stuart

As seen in the film, the brittle punk scene and music press could be cruel, dismissive, and abrasive to Poly, and a series of difficult events prompted her to step out of that world almost as quickly as she’d entered it. “When my mum was a little girl, she dreamed of being famous, but the dream is always different than the reality,” Bell explains. “Being in the limelight and having all that attention just wasn’t for her. She wasn’t suited in terms of her personality. Ultimately, my mum was a very genuine, real person, and she found herself in a very superficial, unreal world. She was so sensitive and had a tendency toward anxiety, and early bipolar disorder was manifesting in her teenage years. People started to deal with her as this character she created rather than the person that she was. That created a deep disconnect for her mentally.”

After a mental-health crisis (when Bell was little), Poly opted to hearken back to her hippie roots by releasing a folk album, Translucence, and moving with Bell to a Hare Krishna sanctuary in England called Bhaktivedanta Manor. “I think she was just overloaded and saturated and fed up with punk,” Bell remarks. “I think she felt like she lost herself during that period. The only way she could piece things back together was to leave the spotlight. At that point, she decided to make an acoustic album because she wouldn’t have to tour or perform live. She wanted to do a studio album that she didn’t really promote. Obviously, it didn’t do well, but my mum was quite happy to retire at a very young age.” Sadly, mental breakdowns and bipolar disorder continued to derail the artist for many years, making it difficult, and at times impossible, for her to raise Bell. Toward the end of her life, Poly found a regimen that seemed to work and regained some equilibrium, even releasing another album (Generation Indigo) and performing her songs with Bell (who once fronted a ska-punk band in Madrid) at one point before cancer took her life.

For X-Ray Spex fans and other human beings alike, I Am a Cliché has much to say about what it means to move through the world as a sensitive artist who wears her soul on her sleeve. It also has much to say about what it means to move through the world when moving through the world is challenging. Bell gave a lot of careful thought to what she would share about her experience as the daughter of someone with, at times, severe mental illness.

Poly Styrene and Celeste Bell

Tony Barratt

“I was as open as I could be. I think it’s really important because often we feel great sympathy in society for those who suffer from mental illness, but the children of the people who suffer, their stories are often neglected,” Bell says. “It’s very difficult for them to speak out about their experiences because it can be really unbelievably challenging for children to have to deal with parents that may not be able to look after them properly. It’s something that we should be talking about, but it’s a really tricky subject. So, I think it was important to be honest about those challenges.”

Now that the film is out in the world, Bell says she’s been getting warm and appreciative feedback from both new fans of her mother’s music and the children of parents who suffer from mental illness. Though we’ve come a long way, she wishes there was a greater societal understanding of the realities of bipolar disorder. “From my perspective, just purely in my case, I think there is probably not that much understanding about how severe and disabling bipolar disorder can be. We need to see all mental illness as a disability. My mother could never hold down any kind of regular job — that would be completely unfeasible for her. We’ve gotten very good at talking about mental illness, but there’s a lot of practical work that needs to be done to make sure we aren’t neglecting these people and letting them fall through the cracks of society.”

As emotionally challenging as it was, Bell found the process of making the film cathartic. “It’s been five years of my life — a long time!” she says. “If I spent that long in therapy, I would’ve resolved a lot of things. On a practical level, one of the things I had to do was collect my thoughts and write about my experiences. If you’ve had challenges in your life and you can’t speak to a therapist for whatever reason, writing everything down is a great practice.”