Skunk Anansie's Skin: ‘Shoot the Royals? The King was actually rather sweet to me'

Telegraph

09-05-2025

'Sexism is not my problem,' insists Skin. 'If I was to worry about that, and being black and queer, I literally wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning. 'Sexism is everywhere, just like racism and homophobia are everywhere. So I had to make a personal decision of how much weight I was going to take on my shoulders – which was zero!'
She declares this with an exultant cackle of laughter. 'It's important to recognise when you're confronted by it, but to bypass it and keep moving forward. It's like no, no, no! You guys just move aside. I'm going to do my thing!'
I wouldn't like to get in Skin's way when she is doing her thing. She may be a featherweight 5ft 5in with a squeaky speaking voice that sounds almost cartoonish, but the loquacious frontwoman for British alternative rock band Skunk Anansie is fantastically fearless.
'I'm not worried about being cancelled, because that's a ridiculous notion,' she declares whilst discussing how timid pop music has become. I suppose it is ridiculous if your whole persona is to be outspoken. Skin has complained over the years about being personified as a 'black, bald-headed, bisexual Amazonian', but in conversation she rarely shies away from the issues of class, race, sexual identity and is certainly not afraid to leap into the fray, sound bites blazing. After all, Skunk Anansie's biggest-selling album, Stoosh (from 1996) opened with a track titled Yes It's F---ing Political.
'There's so much fear around, people are scared to raise their voices,' she tells me now. 'So maybe it's easier to make music that doesn't test people, and easier to market if you do something as bland as f--k!'
There is nothing bland about Skin. She was raised Deborah Anne Dyer in a 'very strict' and 'politically aware' working-class household in Brixton, London, where her mother was active in both church and local government, whilst her former RAF father was often absent as an oil worker. Her grandfather ran a reggae club, but the rebellious teenager was drawn to The Clash and Rolling Stones, joining her first band aged 20. 'It's really discouraged as a black woman to be a rock and roller,' she says. 'But there was a moment when I realised 'why am I trying to be like the person next door, when I stand out by just being myself?''
Her childhood nickname was Skinny. She shortened it to Skin around the same time she first shaved her head, in 1990. 'Every woman I've gone out with has massive long hair, and God, it's so much work and money and time!' Skunk Anansie were signed in 1994, conjuring a hybrid of punk, funk, soul and metal that sounded in stark opposition to the laddish retro rock of Britpop. 'We've always been outsiders. But that can be a powerful place to be.'
It is probably fair to say her politics are more Left-wing and agitational than the politics of most readers here, but she has backed them up with positive community action, advocating for music education and mentoring for youth charities. In 2017, Skunk Anansie launched a scholarship in partnership with the Academy of Contemporary Music providing financial support for aspiring musicians.
At 57, Skin looks and sounds pretty much exactly the same as when I first interviewed her in 1997. I tell her she got me in trouble with my then editors at the Telegraph when the rock provocateur spoke about wanting to 'hang the Tories and shoot the Royal Family'.
'I was obviously joking,' she protests (to be fair, she was). 'Imagine if I said that now? God, nothing is in context any more, and everybody's angry all the time.' In fact, she received an OBE for services to music at Windsor Castle in 2021. 'I got it from the King himself,' she says, rather proudly.
So what happened to her youthful republicanism? 'I'm just older and wiser,' she replies. 'I understand how things work a lot more. I'm a reflection of diverse, modern Britain, and modern Britain gave it to me.' She thought King Charles III was 'very nice, quite gentle and sweet, actually. A lot of people tend to be different from their public persona, or what they represent.'
Skunk Anansie are currently touring their new album, The Painful Truth (out May 23), the quartet's first new music in nine years. Its creation was set in motion by a minor controversy. In 2019, rapper Stormzy tweeted about being 'the first black British artist to headline Glastonbury'.
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Skin fired back 'Sorry Stormzy but we beat you to it in 1999! 20 years ago! ' Stormzy apologised, and Skin bears no ill will. Indeed, she sees the whole thing as innately political. 'There was much excitement around [having] someone who's black who we can use to beat Stormzy with a stick!' I blame the music industry and UK media for wiping out the fact that we did it. Did they really just forget us?'
But she also recognised an opportunity. 'Inadvertently, accidentally, a little tweet put us back in a spotlight.' Post-Covid lockdowns, they were the first major British band to stage an extensive European and UK tour in 2022. There were 'heart-to-heart talks' and a decision to 'do something radically different and take risks'. They recruited TV On the Radio's brilliant Dave Sitek as producer, adding experimental improvisations and electronica to their rock energy.
Skin relished the challenge of the recording process. 'It gets harder, but it should be harder. Life gets harder.' Bassist Richard 'Cass' Lewis was battling stage four cancer during the sessions (he is fully recovered). 'You've got to make music around people's chemo schedules, which is not the kind of thing you think about when you form a band.'
She talks about the 'spontaneity' of youth. 'It's like what I said about the Royal Family – that's how you should feel as a kid, like 'Raaaaahhhhhh!' to everything.' Now, she notes, with 'more experience and technical prowess,' she is more exacting. 'I shouldn't be in love with my first thought, or my first lyric. Otherwise, you literally haven't grown up. You're literally still a f---ing baby, fumbling around with little slogans and hitting everybody over the head with them.'
She admits to disliking the way social media promotion and self-marketing have become such a big part of musical careers. 'It's this thing that's just constantly calling for your attention, it's so noisy, like a child wailing day in and day out, 'pick me up, pick me up!' And I have a three-year-old so I know exactly what I'm talking about.'
Skin has been engaged since 2020 to an American performance artist and events producer known as Ladyfag (she no longer acknowledges her birth name), and they live with their daughter in New York and London. 'I still find men sort of hard and sexy, but my emotional relationships are always with women.' She was previously married to environmental activist Christiana Wyly, daughter of American businessman Sam Wyly (a former billionaire, declared bankrupt in 2014). Skin and Christiana's eight-year relationship ended in divorce in 2015. In a strange turn of events, her ex-wife married Elon Musk's brother Kimbal Musk three years later. Skin seems shocked when I mention it. 'Every day I wake up and hope no one makes that connection,' she admits.
The Musk brothers are close, and Kimbal sits on several of Elon's business boards. 'I hope that my ex is happy,' Skin says. 'I'd say what's happening [politically] now goes against everything she believed in when we were together, but that's her world now, I have nothing to do with it.' Skin met Elon socially during her marriage to Christiana. 'It's not a very authentic world. It's not very empathetic. There's a lot of bigging people up who do very little. I try not to think about Elon Musk and all that lot. I've created my own little family of dreamers, my own little joy, and when we close the door, it's just the three of us, being happy.'
Which is not to suggest she is turning her back on the world. 'Everything is political, now more than ever,' she insists. 'There's nothing that we do as humans that isn't connected to politics in some way, shape or form. Especially with globalisation, it's all about power, money and resources.'
She continues: 'It's tricky to have an opinion about anything in public now, so I try to be very researched about what I say. I read a lot of history. It's an old-school approach. Too many people get their news from memes or 30-second sound bites.'
In an era when pop seems disconnected from harsher realities, Skin remains determined to be someone who speaks up. 'I try not to be super divisive. I can understand that it's easier just to make nice pop music. But when you're one of the groups that is being oppressed, you can't just sit on the fence. My rights are the ones that they're coming for. I married a woman. I'm gay, she's gay, we have a mixed-race child. If we don't stand up for our own lives, who's gonna do it for us?'
Skunk Anansie: The Painful Truth is released on May 23. The single Lost and Found is out on all streaming platforms now. Skunk Anansie are touring the UK and Europe until August 14, tickets: