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Siouxsie Sioux biography

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Quick Facts

  • NAME: Siouxsie Sioux
  • OCCUPATION: Singer
  • BIRTH DATE: May 27, 1957 (Age: 55)
  • PLACE OF BIRTH: Bromley, Kent, United Kingdom
  • Originally: Susan Janet Ballion
  • AKA: Siouxsie Sioux
  • ZODIAC SIGN: Gemini

Best Known For

Siouxsie Sioux is best known as the lead singer of the group Siouxsie and the Banshees, whose most popular singles include "Peek-A-Boo," "Cities in Dust," "The Killing Jar" and "Kiss Them For Me."


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7 on the UK singles chart. Later that year, they released their debut album, The Scream, a discordant, exuberant and highly original record, to rave reviews. Following the acclaimed 1979 follow up, Join Hands, the band's lineup once again reshuffled to include the drummer known simply as "Budgie." While Siouxsie and the Banshees cycled through many musicians over the next decades, Sioux,

Severin and Budgie remained the band's core nucleus throughout its duration.

Throughout the 1980s and '90s, Siouxsie and the Banshees surprised critics by outliving the shock and energy of their early years to become one of the most enduring punk rock bands of all time. The band's 11 total studio albums include Kaleidoscope (1980), A Kiss in the Dreamhouse (1982), Tinderbox (1986), Superstition (1991) and their final album, The Rapture (1995). Their most popular singles include "Peek-A-Boo," "Cities in Dust," "The Killing Jar," "Fear (of the Unknown)" and "Kiss Them For Me," the band's only song to crack the U.S. Top 40.

Other Projects

Sioux and Budgie created a separate band called The Creatures as a side project in 1981. That year, they released an EP called Wild Things, and in 1983 they released their debut album, Feast, which proved to be an enormous critical and commercial success. After The Creatures' 1989 album Boomerang, Sioux and Budgie set The Creatures aside to work with the Banshees. However, after the band's 1996 breakup, Sioux and Budgie turned back to performing and recording as The Creatures full time. They increased their touring schedule and released an EP, Eraser Cut, in 1998 followed by the full-length album Anima Animus in 1999, featuring the hit songs "2nd Floor," "Sing" and "Prettiest Thing." In 2003, The Creatures released their second and final album, Hai!, which featured the single "Godzilla."

Since then, Siouxsie Sioux has continued to tour as a solo artist, performing a mix of Siouxsie and The Banshees and The Creatures songs alongside new material. In 2007, Sioux and Budgie divorced. That same year, she released her first solo album, MantaRay, featuring the songs "Into a Swan" and "Here Comes That Day."

Musical Legacy

One of the most influential singers in the history of punk rock, Sioux stands out for the extraordinary breadth of her career, a rarity among punk rockers, and the consistently outstanding quality of her music. All of her albums, without exception, received rave reviews—no small feat for someone who has recorded as many records as Siouxsie Sioux.

Sioux says that her continued success can be explained by her willingness to evolve to write music that suits the ever-changing state of her life and the world, rather than clinging to the punk angst that defined her early music. "It lost its teeth," Sioux said of punk music. "People forget it was an attitude, a mindset, reacting to what was going on in the world, in music, at that time. You can't take that and place it now: that would just be mimicry ... People doing their own thing—that's punk."

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