Broken English by Marianne Faithful

Broken English, Marianne Faithfull's seventh studio album, came out on Island on 2 November 1979, and it is one of the great comebacks. After the split from Mick Jagger in 1970 she had lost custody of her son, fallen into heroin addiction and lived on London's streets, and years of laryngitis and drug abuse left her voice cracked and dropped low. That ruined voice is the whole point here: it snarls, it aches, it sounds like it has seen everything.

Barry Reynolds produced the demos of the title track and "Why D'Ya Do It" that got Chris Blackwell to sign her, and Mark Miller Mundy handled the rest at Matrix Studios in London, bringing in Steve Winwood on keyboards to push it toward a more modern, electronic sound. It's new wave shot through with punk, blues and reggae. It reached number 82 on the Billboard 200, landed her a Grammy nomination, and sold over one million copies worldwide.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.