TOYAH IN
BLITZED MAGAZINE
MARCH 2026

Toyah Willcox: songwriter, performer, actress and TV presenter . . . a popular female icon with a larger-than-life rebellious character that emerged from Britain's late 70's punk explosion with more than a sprinkling of flamboyance and swagger

Her music has meandered in style between New Wave, Gothic, Rock and Synthpop, but Toyah consistently pushes musical boundaries and today retains the respect of peers and fans for innovation and originality whilst sticking to her principles

Blitzed editors Kurt and Bridget were delighted to speak with Toyah ahead of her forthcoming UK tour, album and book release

BLITZED: Last year was a very busy one for you. You had four albums re-issued on Demon Records and Cherry Red, you had radio presenting, your short stories, touring, festivals, television appearances, and “Chameleon” entered the UK album charts

TOYAH: Yes, and I was so knackered by December! And funnily enough, the one thing that really knackered me was simply the travelling. I love the actual work, I love doing Greatest Hits Radio and I'm so grateful to Martin [Kemp] for going into the jungle. I was zipping all over the place. I remember I did an Adam Ant show in Glasgow and then played Union Chapel in London the next day, in Islington, and that was a killer

BLITZED: Going back to the Adam Ant gig, you looked like you were having fun there. Although it was Adam's audience, it was primarily yours as well

TOYAH: It was fabulous. It was absolutely my audience, but they probably haven't seen me for quite a while. There was a dedicated female concentration there that just truly loved him from the 80's into the 90's. And I thought, "Is this going to be tough? Am I intruding on his space?" But they were wonderful and it's probably critically one of the most important things I did last year because I think I won a new audience, and I kind of verified to myself that my music really does belong somewhere

I mean I'm well known, and people know the singles, but they don't necessarily know the albums. I stuck religiously to a punk setlist with Adam, I did with Big Country as well, and it just was the best reaction I've had for that music in a long, long time. It was lovely


BLITZED: Many young women have resonated with you, as one of the main female artists that inspired them musically and visually through the album sleeves, hair, the makeup and the overall look that went so well with the music

TOYAH: And this is why my new “Meteorite” book is so visual, so thank you for that. I am kind of reclaiming the fact that I did all this back then, and I did it before many other people did it. So, the book is like we very subtly reclaimed my place in history and my place in time, and that's very deliberate. I'm really proud of everything I've done. I don't go to bed at night or wake up in the morning feeling bitter. I'm constantly trying to live in the present and what do I represent in the present and how do I do that?

BLITZED: Who were the artists that you looked up to when you were starting out?

TOYAH: I loved Suzie Quatro because she was so unique as a female musician at that time. I loved the women of Motown, but I was heavily into Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Roxy Music, all those really glamorous men, very into them. So, when I moved to London, I met a wonderful man called Glenn Marks, who gave me the hugest education in music, he culturally built me. And I bought Velvet Underground, Per Ubu, Kraftwerk, I just bought the right albums

We had a punk band together, he was a singer, and I was a singer. But my relationship with him was a purely creative relationship of discovering what new punk bands were out there and buying fanzines, and he printed a fanzine as well. So culturally, I was moving at the speed of light in 1977, and then I met Derek Jarman and I went straight into meeting The Slits, Siouxsie Sioux, Gloria Mundi, who I loved, who had women in the band

And Pink Military, Penetration, I thought Pauline Murray was incredible. So suddenly there were women in music, and they were incredible and powerful, and they were strong and empowered, Poly Styrene and really kind of tough fighting women

BLITZED: You mentioned earlier the release of “Meteorite”, the definitive Toyah book, and it looks amazing. How did you feel about those historic images and memories, and about sifting through and collating putting the book together?


TOYAH: It was incredible really. I always found it really hard to connect to normality. On one page there is a picture of a gravestone, drawn by me when I was 14 . . . you've got Ozzy Osbourne, David Bowie and Mark Bolan. Putting it all together I just went cold when I saw that. All gone now. But I just think that something like that sums up who I am. I just find it very hard to be normal, and I think that page absolutely sums it up, that I just look for other signs on this planet of other things

I'm really glad I had all that material. There are some things I deliberately included because they look incredibly banal, but they really sum up the industry. I actually had to count everything that went in my mouth. I had to write down the calories, and I had to be weighed every day. Even today, I get contracts, if I'm in a movie, that I'm not allowed to alter my weight during the movie

That's understandable because if you watch “Some Like It Hot” with Marilyn Monroe, there's a sequence where she's being wooed by Tony Curtis, where she's put about a stone on in weight and they're having to cover her in a shawl, so it's really understandable if you've got a main role that you cannot alter your weight

But back then, I knew that if I was to get on Top Of The Pops and to succeed and stay relevant at that time, I had to not put any weight on. So, I included all of that in the book. It's such a beautiful book, and you've got the various versions, the Luxe version with the CD album, then you've got the Super Luxe versions with the vinyl. It's in my favourite colour and it's a point of conversation as well. It's very much a visual history because I think that affects young people strongly

I remember looking at book by a makeup artist called Verushka. She was a body painter, and she looked like Venus. She was beautiful, and inspirational to me. I've still got the book. I wanted “Meteorite” to have the same impact

BLITZED: The exclusive album that comes with the book includes some new songs and you used Al in the creation of some of the demos. Can you tell us how you harnessed this technology that many people are very wary of already?

TOYAH: I'm a lyricist, so I write as Toyah. I don't use Al for any of my creative writing. My short stories are all me, my lyrics are all me. But where you can use Al is as a tool to structure demos and I found that very, very useful. You can add your life experience and your creative theory into Al. Four or maybe five songs out of nine started with AI but that's with me putting in my lyrics, my keys, my voice and then I took them into the Smithy studio in Kempsey with Woody, who's my regular engineer and we stripped them down

I replaced all the female voices that AI had generated ... It's weird because in the AI generated voice I could hear Gwen Stefani, I could hear Adele. I could hear Lana Del Rey . . . Al is snatching popular voices that it thinks I want to hear! It's scary. So I went in and I replaced all those vocals with my unique scan, like Bowie had his unique scan

And then we stripped away Al instruments and put real musicians on. That's how we did it. But Andy at Away Media needed this project within seven days, and I could not put a band together in that time . . . no way . . . and record it

So all AI is doing is just listening to the sounds and frequencies and emulating. But as a learning tool, and as a tool for someone who is learning-challenged it's phenomenal. It's like suddenly being able to be me, and to be able to see and to be able to speak. But I do think that it has to be limited so it cannot become a conscious entity


BLITZED: What can you tell us about the next album? Anything or nothing?

TOYAH: I can't tell you anything really, I mean, four of the song demos are going to become full songs. We kept the songs on this limited-edition vinyl to one minute 30 seconds, and they just say 'demo'. Obviously, those are going to be developed and moved on

I've been working with Simon Toulson-Clarke of Red Box on a song for six months now, which I want to be the next single. And bless him, he is so thorough. With Al, I could do it in 30 seconds! We're now six months in with human timing. But this album is going to be great

BLITZED: Can you tell us a bit more about the upcoming tour? Is it a more chilled performance, with stories and songs?

TOYAH: It is, yes. I mean obviously the show is based on the book, it's based on “Meteorite”. So at the moment my media team is building all the visuals and if there's any comparison it's going to be as visual, and as continually moving as Nick Kershaw's recent show. I want this journey of stories that are uniquely feminine and uniquely about survival, because I think being a young woman in this industry, there is an element of survival about it

But I don't want any “woe is me”. I very rarely talk about my disability at my live shows because I have a life of privilege and there's no “woe is me”. I am going to be asked to talk about my mother, which will be very, very hard because life was brutal for her and for us, but that was because of circumstance. And I don't want to start my show with the fact that there was a murderer in the family, and I guess that's quite rare!

I want people to come to my show and be uplifted and to go out into the world feeling that they can achieve anything and they can be their authentic selves. That's the most important thing to me. I'm opening with a song called “Bird in Flight”, because that song represented the damage from my childhood, but also the freedom of getting out of the family and that's where I'm going to start the show from

I am doing 49 shows, so I should get it right by the end! I will have two guitarists that I did the Big Country tour with, that's Pete Rinaldi, who you'd have seen on stage if you saw Martin Fry. And then Mike Goodman, who I've been working with for a couple of years. What I love about being with these two musicians is they sing, they're brilliant players, they're great fun to be with, and they have amazing energy

Blitzed Magazine