Pop diva and actress Toyah Wilcox has had an extraordinary career in the British music scene, moving between post- '77 English punk opportunism, the new wave underground, pop stardom, mature experimentalism and post-pop music and theater. Her earliest, dramatic look -- wild hairstyles, theatrical make-up and extravagant costuming -- was the height of the 1980s new wave-glam look. Music and acting have been concurrent within Toyah's work from day one, when she played the character Mad in the Derek Jarman punk/squatter film Jubilee. She had hoped that the film soundtrack collaboration on 9 to 5 as ManEaters with the new romantic star/actor Adam Ant, would jump-start a project with her pre-existing songwriting partner, Joel Bogen. While this did not work out, Bogen and Wilcox continued writing songs, which culminated in Sheep Farming in Barnet, the first album for the band now named Toyah. At this time, also, Wilcox was on the set of the Who movie Quadrophenia. The band was signed by Safari Records, which re-released some of the Sheep Farming material and sent Toyah into the studio with producer Steve James to record the 1980 album Blue Meaning. The following tour resulted in the live album Toyah! Toyah! Toyah!. With the success of EP track "It's a Mystery," written by Keith Hale, the band returned to the studio to record Anthem, with the single "I Want to Be Free," which combined big synth and drum sounds with Toyah's characteristic glam-theatric, in-your-face brattiness with world-conquering lyrics. In 1982, after another successful EP, Toyah recorded The Changeling with singles "Brave New World" and audience-favorite "Angel and Me." The final two dates of their tour, at the Hammersmith Odeon, were source material for Warrior Rock: Toyah on Tour. The 1983 album Love Is the Law included "Rebel Run," "The Vow" and the title-track, which featured a chorus of rabid fans who had been living outside the studios where the album was being recorded. This album was the end of Wilcox's relationship with Safari and Joel Bogen. The second stage of Wilcox's career saw her emerge as a solo artist signed to Epic with the decidedly '80s pop sounding first album Minx. Safari released an unauthorized album, Mayhem, at this time, collecting the former band's unreleased work with alternate lyrics. Wilcox then worked for the film Lorca and the Outlaws, for which she wrote lyrics and appeared in the film as a 3-D-video projection in a nightclub. In 1986 the story-telling album The Lady or the Tiger?, marked her first collaboration with future husband Robert Fripp. After moving to E.G. Records, Wilcox recorded Desire at Abbey Road, the first album to garner significant comparison to Kate Bush, which included a cover of the Martha and the Muffins hit "Echo Beach." Unhappy with this cover and other things, Wilcox recorded Prostitute, her most critically acclaimed and experimental work, in 1988. An ongoing project with her husband, as Sunday All Over the World, resulted in the recording of the tracks for the more-pop/progressive oriented 1991 Toyah album Ophelia's Shadow and the full-length Sunday All Over the World album Kneeling at the Shrine. In the early 1990s, Wilcox also formed the band She Devils with members of Girls School for the Women in Rock Festival. In 1993, Wilcox's collaboration as part of the Polish band Kiss of Reality was released as a self-titled album in Germany. Later that year she formed Friday Forever with Treacle River, which became her backing band, and recorded the cassette-only album Leap! (also known as " Take the Leap "), which included songs written for various other projects and new versions of older material. Around this time she began recording work for the Dreamchild album, a collection of dance-oriented ambient tracks with producer Mike Bennett. The follow-up album, Eternity, was shelved over creative differences. Around this time Toyah Classics and Toyah: The Acoustic Album appeared, revisiting previous material. Wilcox spent most of the late '90s and early '00s contributing one-off tracks and vocals to other artists and reanimating her singing and acting career for musicals like Cabaret. In 2000 her autobiography, Toyah Wilcox Living Out Loud was released. In the early '00s, Wilcox toured again as part of an '80s nostalgia package and started the label Vertical Species to release her current work and reissues of her older work. ~ D. Carr, All Music Guide