TOYAH

WHEN THE WORLD FELL SILENT LAST YEAR, TOYAH WILLCOX DECIDED IT WAS TIME TO MAKE SOME NOISE. THE RESULT IS POSH POP, THE SINGER’S FIRST ALBUM IN 13 YEARS –A DEFIANTLY ENERGISED RESPONSE TO THE MOST TESTING OF TIMES. AND THEN THERE WAS THE SMALL MATTER OF BECOMING A GLOBAL INTERNET SENSATION… “I HAVE TO DRIVE MY OWN SHIP,” THE PUNK ICON TELLS CLASSIC POP. “NO ONE ELSE CAN DO IT FOR ME.”

PAUL KIRKLEY

The first image that greets Classic Pop when we Zoom call Toyah Willcox at home is that of her husband, King Crimson legend Robert Fripp, sweeping up shards of broken glass with a dustpan and brush. “We’ve just had something happen that’s freaked me out,” explains Toyah. “I was talking about my mother, and a gold disc flew off the wall and smashed.”

The disc in question was for her third album, 1981’s Anthem – the one that spawned the Top 10 hits I Want To Be Free and Thunder In The Mountains (and actually went platinum, if we’re keeping score).

A dozen more long-players followed in its wake and now, after a 13-year studio hiatus, the former punk princess is back with album number 16, Posh Pop – written and recorded in lockdown during what proved to be an incredibly fertile creative period for the 63-year-old.

“I became very prolific in lockdown,” explains Toyah. “I thought, this is the only opportunity I’m ever going to get to write the book I want to write, write the songs I want to write, do the paintings I want to paint. I’m not getting a hundred emails a day about gigs, or dealing with the band’s hotel and laundry.

”I wrote 28 songs before we even started making the album. I was just exploding with ideas.”

This outpouring of creative energy is evident across the album’s heady mix of turbo-charged power pop and glam rock –a burst of euphoric noise emerging “from the silence of the world”. It’s a philosophy perfectly encapsulated on opening track Levitate.

Anthem (left) celebrates its 40th anniversary this year

“I BECAAME VIERY PROLIFIC IN LOCKDOWN. I WROTE 28 SONGS BEFORE WE EVEN STARTED MAKING THE ALBUM”

“That was very deliberate,” says Toyah. “I wanted to open with a song that lifts you out of the mundanity of being locked inside, and takes you through the roof.” But it’s important, she cautions, that the record’s defiant mood is placed in context. “It’s positive, but it says: we share your grief. I do believe most of us were in terror during the early weeks of the lockdown. I did a lot of praying. Robert and I lost our greatest friend, Bill Rieflin,” Toyah adds of the former King Crimson and R.E.M. drummer, who died of cancer in March last year. “We were both completely broken by that, and we were looking at a broken world.