John Lydon

Born in Finsbury Park in north London to an Irish-origin family, John Lydon emerged in the mid-1970s as the voice of the Sex Pistols under the name Johnny Rotten, with a blunt, dry and sarcastic punk-rock style. With the band he co-wrote singles such as "Anarchy in the U.K.", "God Save the Queen" and "Holidays in the Sun", and the sole studio album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977). After the group's split in 1978, Lydon founded Public Image Ltd, the central project of his career, where he considerably broadened his palette toward a more experimental post-punk marked by dub, new wave, angular funk and freer structures. This evolution can be heard on Public Image: First Issue (1978), Metal Box (1979), The Flowers of Romance (1981) and Album (1986). His subsequent career alternated between Sex Pistols reunions, a relaunch of Public Image Ltd from 2009, and ventures outside that framework, including "World Destruction" with Afrika Bambaataa (1984), "Open Up" with Leftfield (1993) and the solo album Psycho’s Path (1997). Vocally, Lydon remains central: a nervous, often spoken delivery that shifts from punk attack to harsher, more rhythmic or introspective forms.