Condition: Brand New Ships from: Melbourne

• Description
• Release details
• Tracklist

• Broken English, released in November 1979, marks a bold reinvention for Marianne Faithfull after years of personal and professional turmoil. The album embraces a darker, more experimental terrain grounded in new wave, punk, reggae, and electro influences. Faithfulls voice, already altered by years of excess, emerges here as a gravelly instrument that carries vulnerability and edge at once. Produced by Mark Miller Mundy and recorded at Matrix Studios in London, it captures a restrained but potent sound dispositionsparse instrumentation, synthesizers, and tightly wrought arrangements undergird the emotional weight of the material.

  From the defiant title track to the scathing Whyd Ya Do It? and her haunting version of Lennons Working Class Hero, the album is deeply personal and confrontational. It illuminated a new public persona for Faithfullone of survival, bitterness and resiliencerather than muse or ingnue. Over time, Broken English has become widely hailed as her defining record, a comeback framed not as restoration but transformation, and a touchstone for artists engaging with pain, voice, and reinvention.

  Reviews

  It is a perfectly intentional, controlled, unique statement about fury, defeat and rancor. Rolling Stone

  The cracked, undead voice of a woman back from exile to make a record about the simple audacity of staying alive. Pitchfork

  Review

  AllMusic rating: AllMusic users: (669 votes) Read the AllMusic.com review

• Artist: Marianne Faithfull Label: Island Records Format: LP Units: 1 Country: Europe Genre: Pop & Rock Style: Art Rock, Classic Rock

• A1 Broken English
  A2 Witches’ Song
  A3 Brain Drain
  A4 Guilt
  B1 The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan
  B2 What’S The Hurry
  B3 Working Class Hero
  B4 Why’D Ya Do It