Detroit, MI · new wave · art-pop

Lene Lovich

1 upcoming festival

New wave's great eccentric — yelps, trills, and a vocal style nobody has successfully copied, 'Lucky Number' still gloriously odd.

Lene Lovich was born Lili-Marlene Premilovich in Detroit and moved to England as a teenager, settling in Hull before making her way into the London music scene. She signed to Stiff Records in the late 1970s and became one of the label's defining figures.

Her voice is the centrepiece of the music: a high, hiccupping, trilling delivery that borrows from folk singing and operatic phrasing as much as from rock, set against keyboard-driven new wave arrangements. "Lucky Number" was her best-known single, and her work with Les Chappell also produced "Say When," "Bird Song" and "New Toy," the last written by Thomas Dolby. Her stage presentation — braided hair, theatrical costume, deliberate strangeness — was as distinctive as the records.

new waveart-pop