Outsiders: Siouxsie Sioux

Siouxsie Sioux (1957-present) is an English musician and cultural icon who helped shape the punk and gothic rock movements with her band Siouxsie and the Banshees. Known for her commanding stage presence, fierce makeup and fashion, and defiant lyrics, she broke boundaries for women in music.

For Further Reading:

• Siouxsie Sioux: 'I've always felt on the outside' – a classic interview from the vaults
• A Conversation With Siouxsie Sioux
• Siouxsie Sioux at 60: more than a monochrome goth-pop priestess
• The high priestess of punk: Siouxsie Sioux and her profound impact
• Kaleidoscope: A Retrospective of Siouxsie and The Banshees 
• Siouxsie and the Banshees: Back to Black

This month we're talking about Outsiders -- women who marched to the beat of their own drum and rejected stereotypes about what women "should" be. They are aesthetic pioneers, norm-benders, and often the only woman in their field.

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.

Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones, Abbey Delk, Adrien Behn, Alyia Yates, Vanessa Handy, Melia Agudelo, and Joia Putnoi. Special thanks to Shira Atkins.

Original theme music by Brittany Martinez.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this
is Wamanica. This month, we're talking about outsiders, women who
marched to the beat of their own drum and rejected
stereotypes about what women should be. Their aesthetic pioneers, norm benders,
and often one of the only women in their field.
With her thickly lined eyes, spiky black hair, and commanding voice,

(00:23):
this musician helped define the post punk era and became
a driving force behind the goth movement. Her unapologetic persona
and artistic vision turned her into a cultural icon who
refused to be defined by anyone's expectations or labels but
her own. Please welcome Susie Sue. Susie Sue was born

(00:44):
Susan Janet Vallian in nineteen fifty seven in South London.
Her mother was a secretary and her father was a
Belgian bacteriologist who battled alcoholism. Throughout her childhood, Susan grew
up struggling with loneliness caused by an unstable home life.
She would avoid hoping her friends over embarrassed for them
to see the state of her father. When she was

(01:04):
nine years old, Susan was sexually assaulted an experience that
was later dismissed by the police and her parents, deepening
her sense of isolation and distrust of adults. She later
recalled I had no one to confide in, so I
invented my own world, my own reality. It was my
own way of defending myself, protecting myself from the outside world.

(01:24):
The only way I could deal with how to survive
was to get some strong armor. When she was fourteen
years old, her father passed away. Susan turned to music
and fashion as a refuge from the trauma of her
early life. She began to slowly shape the bold persona
that would become Susie Sue, and developed a taste for
the subversive and unconventional. By her late teens, she'd transformed herself.

(01:48):
The shy suburban girl was gone, replaced by a striking
figure clad in leather and vinyl, with thick cat eyeliner,
red lipstick, and spiky black hair. Her bold, gothic asthetic
made her a way well known figure in the London
club scene at the time. By the mid nineteen seventies,
punk was exploding onto the British music scene. The genre

(02:08):
of skyrocketing popularity was largely due to one band, the
sex Pistols. For nineteen year old Susie, this was the
perfect storm, music that matched her a cob style an
instinct to reject mainstream culture and morality. She became part
of the Bromley Contingent. They were a group of young
punks who befriended The sex Pistols as early supporters when

(02:30):
the band still barely had an audience. At one point,
she made his television appearance alongside the band on the
Bill Grundy Show. During the infamous interview, Bill flirted with Susie,
leading the band's guitarist to unleash a string of expletives
on air. Are even worried? Or you just enjoying so myself?
Are you yeah? So I thought you would do it well.
I wanted to make did you really? We'll wait talk

(02:53):
to each other. The growing spotlight a negative press that
came from that appearance led Susie to distance herself from
The sex Pistols and focus on her own punk band,
Susie and the Banshees. The band's story began with an
impromptu performance at London's one hundred Club Punk festival in
September of nineteen seventy six, With just one day of

(03:17):
practice under their belts and no prior musical training, Susie
took the stage alongside future Banshee bassist Stephen Severin, with
a young Sid Vicious on drums. Their set was a
twenty minute long improvisation around the Lord's Prayer. It was
part performance art, part provocation. Susie wore a controversial swastika armband,

(03:39):
which wasn't unusual at the time in the punk scene.
She later claimed the infamous symbol was meant to provoke
older people and make them go completely red faced. For
audiences and lovers of the contentious subculture, this raw and
unpolished live debut was pure punk, defiant, and completely original.
Critics were less welcome. One journalist called the set unbearable.

(04:03):
Despite mixed reviews, Susie, Sue and the Bansheese gained significant
momentum after that performance. In nineteen seventy seven, they toured
across England. In the summer of nineteen seventy eight, their
debut single, Hong Kong Garden, became a hit, peaking at
number seven on the UK Singles Chart. That same year,
Susie and the Banshees released their debut album, The Screen.

(04:24):
Music critics were stunned by its raw intensity and Susie's
commanding presence. Some even credited it as the best debut
album of the year. The Scream wasn't just another punk album.
It was a manifesto. While male dominated punk bands were
singing about anarchy and destruction, Susie's lyrics explored themes of alienation,
sexual politics, and mental fragility. The album would go on

(04:48):
to influence countless artists from post punk bands like The
Cure and Joy Division to later act like Tricky and
LCD sound System. Their second album, Join Hands, released in nineteen.
In seventy nine, doubled down on their dark aesthetic, but
it was their third album, Kaleidoscope, that showed just how
far they could push their sound, incorporating synthesizers, drum machines,

(05:10):
and other elements of electronic music. A lot of early
punk scenes developed in and around gay clubs, where androgeny
and bisexuality were common, but lesbian themes and music were
still pretty rare. Susie pushed the boundaries there too, with
songs like Sin in My Heart from the band's album Juju.

(05:31):
Throughout the early nineteen eighties. The band continued to evolve,
cementing Susie's influence on what was becoming known as gothic rock,
but she refused to be put in any box. In
a nineteen eighty two interview with The Guardian, when asked
about being labeled a goth icon, Susie shot back, I
hate all that. In Susie's opinion, the concept of goth

(05:52):
had been misunderstood by the media as mere spooky theatrics,
but for her, the challenge goth music presented to mainstream
culture was much deeper, something twisted and emotionally complex, with
the power to topple convention. By the late nineteen eighties,
Susie and the Banshees had achieved what few punk bands managed,
mainstream success without compromising their artistic vision. Songs like Peekaboo

(06:16):
combined accordion with drums and carried a hip hop influence.
Their song Kissed Them for Me leaned into a more
straightforwardly pop sound with a watery, free flowing vibe that
made it perfect for the dance floor. Both songs climbed
the charts in the UK and US with Kissed Them
for Me, reaching the top twenty five on the Billboard

(06:37):
Hot one hundred in nineteen ninety one. After two decades
of boundary pushing music, Susie and the Banshees disbanded in
nineteen ninety six, but Susie was far from finished. She
kept making music with her former Banshee's bandmate and husband,
Budgie Clark in their group The Creatures, until they announced
their divorce in two thousand and seven. That same year,

(06:59):
she released her solo album, Manta Ray and an Erow.
And female musicians were often sexualized, overlooked, or outright dismissed.
Susie was unapologetically front and center. She was not a
sex symbol. She was an artistic force. Her makeup and
fashion were armor, art and statement all at once. Her
stage presence wasn't about seduction, but confrontation. She chose to

(07:22):
sing about power, fear, and the darkest corners of the
human experience. Today, Susie's influence can be seen across music
and fashion. Artists from PJ. Harvey to Florence and the
Machine to Lady Gaga have all drawn influence from her
sound and singular style. All month, we're talking about Outsiders.
For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at

(07:44):
Wamanica Podcast special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister
and co creator. Talk to you tomorrow