Make It New: X-Ray Spex – “Germfree Adolescents” (1978)

There are certain downsides to doing this list from the bottom up. While one can argue that many of these albums are filled with great moments, there’s a reason that bands like Soft Boys and The Vapors never quite had the longevity of people closer to the top. Some of it was likely in-house fighting, but they just didn’t have the charisma to stick around. It has become a trope on Make It New that no band has actually lasted more than two albums and even fewer make it past 1985. To say the least, this is a genre that feels marketed towards flash in the pans, not unlike the punk rock genre that serves as New Wave’s brattier cousin.

Of every name I expected to see on here, I am surprised to see X-Ray Spex. In my imagination, they fall more under the punk umbrella. Sure, bands like Bow Wow Wow have flirted with that genre, but never as blatantly as X-Ray Spex, whose very aesthetic feels ingrained in the punk ethos. They were about being outsiders, reflecting a culture that was fake and manufactured. Okay, in that way they’re no different than The Buggles. In fact, it’s arguable that the only reason they fit on this list is largely because of who’s at the front of things: singer Poly Styrene. Because of her desire to play against expectations of the punk scene by being bright and cheerful with nursery rhyme-style music, she in some ways reflects core values of the genre that continues to lack cohesion after seven columns.

To me, “Germfree Adolescents” is more directly punk. Then again, I feel the same way about DEVO who are in some ways contemporary to X-Ray Spex, debuting in the late-70s with a sound that at best irritates the very idea of Top 40. Is it because they have an amazing use of saxophone in every song? Is it because lyrically they are sometimes subversive in ways reminiscent of 60s girl groups? Whatever it may be, I sincerely love them. In fact, I’d argue of the early run of albums, this is the first front-to-back masterpiece that’s been covered, and one that feels essential for anyone wanting a romping good time.

While not on the original pressing of the album, there’s something to be said for their defining song “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” Given my comments about how I felt like Malcolm McLaren was pointlessly sexualizing Bow Wow Wow for profit, it’s exciting to hear Styrene sing this song that screams the exact opposite. While the lyrics would suggest some themes of S&M, the greater intent is to comment on the ways that women feel restricted in society, frustrated at the chains that everyone puts them in. When Styrene yells about being tied to a wall, it’s not for some form of pleasure. It’s a commentary, feeling this rambunctious woman yell for freedom.

Another thing that’s so wonderful about Styrene is that it’s clear how much of herself she put into this song. The calm before the storm doesn’t prepare the listener for her screaming the title, counting in the band as she sings with such aggression. Rarely have you believed that anyone sincerely meant to shout “Up yours!” this much. Not only that but the way that the chorus is punctuated by a rising voice of frustration that cracks after being sustained works as its own metaphor. With these three minutes, the band cemented their legacy. Thankfully, they had enough fuel in the tank to release a full album.

Before diving into the album, I’ll dedicate a brief section to the origin of the band. The name comes from x-ray specks, which were glasses often sold in the back of comic books. They were supposed to seem futuristic but at some point became these fake, cheap novelties. Much like her own stage name, Poly Styrene felt the need to adopt the persona that the world was artificial, mass-producing waste that didn’t matter. Match that with her general belief that the music was an upbeat alternative to the more cynical punk rock stylings of bands like The Sex Pistols, and you get a band who were already high concept even if most of their music doesn’t necessarily encourage that definition. Given that she also designed her own outfits, she was everything that a D.I.Y. artist could want on top of herself being an outsider as a Somalian who had also been a hippie the decade prior. Given that there are rumors of her being a trained opera singer, there’s so much that makes the lore of X-Ray Spex so strange and compelling.

As an overview, I figured that I’d answer the question: why do I love this album? I’m sure that some clues were given with “Oh Bondage Up Yours,” but that feels a little simple. As someone who spent his high school years listening to a lot of punk albums, “Germfree Adolescents” was somewhere in the mix. When you first hear it, there’s something revelatory about Styrene’s voice. Even the use of saxophone feels strange, even though third-wave ska by then had normalized the idea of hearing fast guitars with horns. Even then, there’s no 70s punk band that to me sounds like this. Her voice had a squeak to it, this cockiness that made you believe that even if she sounded small, she was tough, capable of defending herself against any and all people flying out of the mosh pit. It wasn’t some posturing. She was authentic, and she sounded like she was having fun the entire time.

I realize when looking at the lyrics that part of it is that they’re playful. Even when singing about something as morbid as abuse, Styrene has this optimism that is jarring. To begin, I’ll look at “I Can’t Do Anything,” which cleverly turns the idea of dysfunction into a constantly revealing journey. Usually when somebody sings lines like “I can’t write/And I can’t sing/I can’t do anything,” it’s about how romance disables us. The only catch is that she is slowly revealing something more complicated. This sense of longing evokes a sickness that appears in the chorus, again sung with a rhythm that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Dr. Seuss reading:

Freddy tried to strangle me

With my plastic popper beads

But I hit him back

With my pet rat

In ostensibly four lines, Styrene paints a picture that continually surprises the listener. Considering everything that she just sang about, it suddenly makes sense that the reason she’s unable to do anything is that Freddy is strangling her. Following that up with a Rolled R on “pet rat” and the abuse again feels cheeky. There’s so much that’s disorienting about this exchange but is inherently punk. Given Styrene’s focus on feeling trapped in a patriarchy, it makes sense that she uses such scrappy means to survive. I feel like this song, more than any others, captures what the album is at its heart. There’s humor, sadness, and violence all competing in her mind. It’s a tale of survival, and with an occasional saxophone solo, it’s downright curious. Many punk bands sang about the system keeping them down, but few were as sincere as this.

This isn’t to say that most of the album falls on the autobiographical. The opening number finds her yelling “Art-I-Ficial” in such an artificial way, echoing with an unconvincing reverb. The song is about consumerism’s cynical power over us. Given that two songs later features the delightful “Warrior in Woolworths,” itself bouncing with a poppier-than-normal guitar, it’s clear how much of this album serves as commentary. The only difference between them and The Buggles is that despite both coming from a place of satire, Styrene feels almost too committed to the bit. By the time she sings “Plastic Bag,” she applies an airhead quality that goes for faux-intellectualism while creating the album’s epic about collecting useless information. It’s subversive, funny, and most of all as a singer she has this personality that elevates the repetition into something much more enjoyable. Also, shouting lines like “I eat Kleenex for breakfast” and “Apathy’s a drag” are so delightfully antagonistic that the deeper commentary doesn’t feel cloying.

“Germfree Adolescents” as an album is much more complicated than the average punk album. Considering that there are often chaotic shifts between verses and choruses, it hides the fact that Styrene is having so much fun vocally, that she’s singing about the endless conflicts of the world. Sure, songs like “Let’s Submerge” are aggressive pump-up hits, but looking at songs like “Day the World Turned Day-Glo” finds one of their catchiest choruses grounding a story about the world changing into a wasteland of mass production. It’s lines like these that capture just how brilliant X-Ray Spex were as more than an energy-enhancing listen:

I wrenched the nylon curtains back

As far as they would go

And peered through perspex window panes

At the acrylic road

With very limited word space, Styrene has created an image of consumerism that has bled into every fiber of our world. These terms may be simple adjectives, but they also have ties to products that people in the 70s consumed, and it shows how codependent everyone has become. The world is Day-Glo now, and Styrene is a punk version of George Orwell. It’s a cautionary tale that even 43 years later we haven’t learned from. But hey, at least the song is really catchy, sure to get the crowd going.

Details that I think make the album more of a miracle include the fact that Styrene claims to have grown disinterest with the punk rock style. Given that she did a reggae-twinged song before the band called “Silly Billy,” it’s clear that her tastes were expansive. Still, the band was able to record around her audio track, making the final products all the more impressive. I’m not an expert on the album’s history, but it sounds flawless if just because it’s a bunch of young musicians going for broke. This is their one shot and they did it masterfully. Like the best of creatives, they see a problem and find a way to work around it.

What I love is that while this band never struck me as radio ready, they have permeated culture in ways that most bands I’ll cover wish. Styrene’s rebellious nature has inspired generations of female singers to give their all. She is credited with inspiring the Riot Grrrl genre for bands like Bikini Kill and L7. Elsewhere, she has inspired every singer who thought to protest until their voice cracked. They were a feminist band, transcending boundaries with such precision. Better yet, I’m happy to say that even in the 21st century I’ve heard their music featured everywhere from the great teen comedy Banana Split (2020) to Girl Talk’s “Feed the Animals” mash-up album.

So long as there’s a fondness for punk music, X-Ray Spex will continue to be vital. Given that teenagers will need a way to rebel, it’s likely that they’ll come across this record and find something that speaks to them. Even if it’s just the idea of a pipsqueak shouting over loud guitars, that will be a timeless shock to the system. There is a purpose to Styrene’s vocals. It is transformative, and something that has thankfully only grown in stature in years since.

The real question I have is one I’ve asked about every album. How is this considered New Wave? To be quite honest, I think a conflict of this genre is that every band is flirting with another genre, creating a sound that shouldn’t be commercial and yet has this bounce to it that puts it in a grey area for pop. X-Ray Spex was too anti-consumerist to really fit this bill, but at the same time, they were pushing boundaries, playfully annoying the norms in hopes of persuading change. Because of this, I don’t entirely think they’re far removed from bands like The English Beat. They may be nothing alike, but given that they each share an authentic urgency to the issues of their time, they define a perspective. X-Ray Spex may have burned out as quickly as they appeared, but like the best of the genre, what they left behind is definitely worth holding onto at all costs. “Germfree Adolescents,” whether or not it fits the genre, is a masterpiece through and through.

Up Next: Adam and the Ants – “Kings of the Wild Frontier” (1980)