Patti Smith

An acclaimed poet, painter, author, and photographer as well as singer/songwriter, Patti Smith ranks among the most ambitious, unconventional, and challenging artists. When she emerged in the '70s, Smith was hailed as punk rock's poet laureate, delivering the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan's heyday with her unabashedly intellectual and uncompromising songwriting. Smith followed her muse wherever it took her, from structured rock songs to free-form experimentalism. Her most avant-garde outings, such as 1975's Horses and the following year's Radio Ethiopia, borrowed improvisation and interplay from free jazz, but remained firmly rooted in primal three-chord rock & roll. A regular at CBGB's during New York punk's early days, the artiness and the raw musicianship of her work had a major impact on the movement among contemporaries and followers alike. As boundary-pushing as her music could be, Smith nevertheless scored a hit in the Bruce Springsteen collaboration "Because the Night" from 1978's Easter, which, like 1979's Wave, offered a slightly more polished version of her sound. When she returned to music following a lengthy hiatus and the death of her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith, her work was sometimes subtler and more meditative, as on 1996's Gone Again, but rock was still a fiery, vital part of 2000's Grammy-nominated Gung Ho and 2012's Banga. Her other projects in the 2010s and 2020s, such as her National Book Award-winning memoir Just Kids and her work with Soundwalk Collective on projects like The Perfect Vision trilogy and 2025's Khandroma proved her expression was still boundless.

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