Patti Smith is an American singer, songwriter, author, and poet who became a key component in the New York punk rock movement in the 1970s with her debut album Horses.
She has released 11 studio albums since and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Because the Night – her most successful single – was co-written with Bruce Springsteen and hit #13 on the Billboard Charts in 1978.
Her 2010 memoir Just Kids, which followed her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe in the '70s, won the National Book Award and is hailed as her finest novel.
Her epoch-defining masterpiece Horses was recorded was released at the end of 1975. Recorded at Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady studios in New York, it was produced by The Velvet Underground's John Cale. The choice of studio was partly due to the influence of her late friend and idol, Hendrix, but the sounds took on a completely different guise.
The genre-bending album touches on proto-punk, jazz, poetry, and more. Thematically diverse, it takes on sex, death, drugs and the philosophical quandaries that still resonate today. Patti Smith is simultaneously an icon and iconoclast, tearing down masculine rock ideals, while influencing a diverse range of artists for decades.
