Siouxsie Sioux - Influence On Other Artists

Influence On Other Artists

Her voice is, in its own right, the common thread through all of it. There is no one who sings like that. And I think there are a lot of people who were influenced by it, but even if you try and sing like her, you can't do that. You can't throw your voice like that. You can't throw harmony like that. That is a very distinct voice. Her technique is a thread between the really far-out stuff and opera and pop music. It's distinct. It's all her own.

— Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio

Siouxsie's influence on modern music has been considerable.

Siouxsie had a strong impact on two trip-hop acts. Tricky covered the 1983's proto trip-hop "Tattoo" to open his second album Nearly God and Massive Attack sampled "Metal Postcard" on their song "Superpredators (Metal Postcard)" for the soundtrack to the film The Jackal.

Other acts also covered Siouxsie's songs. Jeff Buckley, who took inspiration in various female singers, performed live "Killing Time", composed by Siouxsie and Budgie in 1989 for the Creatures album Boomerang: Buckley first sang it in 1992 for radio WFMU. LCD Soundsystem recorded a cover of "Slowdive" for the B-side of "Disco Infiltrator": their version was also released on Introns. Santigold based one of her tracks on the music of "Red Light" : "'My Superman' is an interpolation of a Siouxsie Sioux song, 'Red Light'". In 2003, The Beta Band sampled "Painted Bird" and changed the title in "Liquid Bird" on their Heroes to Zeros album. Red Hot Chili Peppers performed "Christine" at the V2001 festival and introduced it to their British audience as "your national anthem". Lo-fi songwriter Jeremy Jay revisited "Lunar Camel" on his debut Airwalker EP. Indie folk group DeVotchKa covered the ballad "The Last Beat of My Heart" on the suggestion of Arcade Fire singer, Win Butler; it was released on the Curse Your Little Heart EP.

Siouxsie has also been hailed by other critically acclaimed groups. Morrissey, previously of The Smiths said that "Siouxsie and the Banshees were excellent. They were one of the great groups of the late 70s, early 80s". He also stated of modern groups in 1994: "None of them are as good as Siouxsie and the Banshees at full pelt. That's not dusty nostalgia, that's fact." Another ex-member of The Smiths, Johnny Marr mentioned that he rated very high guitarist John McGeoch for his work on Siouxsie's single "Spellbound". Marr qualified it as "clever" with "really good picky thing going on which is very un-rock'n'roll." Radiohead also cited McGeoch-era Siouxsie records when mentioning the recording of "There There".

Siouxsie has influenced other bands ranging from contemporaries U2 and The Cure to later acts like The Jesus and Mary Chain, Jane's Addiction and TV on the Radio. U2 Frontman Bono named her as model in the band's 2006 autobiography U2 by U2. He was inspired by her way of singing. With his band, he selected "Christine" for a compilation made for Mojo's readers. U2 guitarist The Edge also was the presenter of an award given to Siouxsie at a Mojo ceremony in 2005. The Cure's Robert Smith declared in 2003: "Siouxsie and The Banshees and Wire were the two bands I really admired. They meant something." He also pinpointed what the Join Hands tour brought him musically. "On stage that first night with the Banshees, I was blown away by how powerful I felt playing that kind of music. It was so different to what we were doing with The Cure. Before that, I'd wanted us to be like The Buzzcocks or Elvis Costello, the punk Beatles. Being a Banshee really changed my attitude to what I was doing." For his record The Head on the Door in 1985, he stated : "It reminds me of the Kaleidoscope album, the idea of having lots of different sounding things, different colours". Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction once made a parallel between his band and the Banshees: "there are so many similar threads: melody, use of sound, attitude, sex-appeal. I always saw Jane's Addiction as the masculine Siouxsie & the Banshees." From a younger generation, Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio mentioned the poppiest songs of Siouxsie for the arrangements: "I've always tried to make a song that begins like "Kiss Them for Me". I think songs like "I Was a Lover" or "Wash the Day away" came from that element of surprise mode where all of a sudden this giant drum comes in and you're like, what the fuck?! That record was the first one where I was like, okay, even my friends're going to fall for this. I feel like that transition into that record was a relief for me. Really beautiful music was always considered too weird by the normal kids and that was the first example where I thought, we've got them, they're hooked! I watched people dance to that song, people who had never heard of any of the music that I listened to, they heard that music in a club and went crazy.

Siouxsie has also been hailed by several female singers. PJ Harvey selected Anima Animus album by Siouxsie's second band The Creatures, in her top ten favourite albums of the year 1999. Sinéad O'Connor said that when she started, Siouxsie was one of her favourite singers. Garbage's Shirley Manson cited her as an influence : "I learned how to sing listening to The Scream and Kaleidoscope." The singer of Garbage also mentioned that Siouxsie embodied everything she wanted to be as a young woman. Gossip cited her as one of their influences for their 2009's Music For Men. Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters named Siouxsie as a source of inspiration and the Banshees as her favourite band.

Electronica singer Santigold has said :

I keep a Rolodex of the women that vocally inspire me. There aren't that many, but she's definitely one of them. I remember one of the first times I heard "Red Light" it was at a party, and I remember going up to the DJ and being like, "Who's this?". It was that good. I kind of stopped and was like... wow. There's not a tremendous amount of women who are bold and forward thinking as artists. I feel like her music, at the time especially, was pretty unique in the way that it sort of matched her style. The freedom of experimenting with this dark place that doesn't have a place often in modern music.