Ronny: Androgynous goddess

These days, the New Romantic wave of the early 1980s is usually associated with groups such as Culture Club and Duran Duran – rather gaudy, uninteresting pop groups.

However, there was a darker underside to the New Romantic era that not only was far more interesting and stylish, but has also aged much better.

Ronny was French fashion model who moved to London to be a part of the music scene there. It is difficult to find information about her, and she was in no way a prolific artist. However, she produced one 12” single, produced by Visage frontman Steve Strange, which is one of Lord Bassington-Bassington’s most treasured slabs of vinyl.

The song on this video, “Blue Cabaret” is taken from this 12”, and represents not only Ronny at her best, but what a New Romantic singer could be: A Marlene Dietrich with Kraftwerk as a backing group.

A dear friend of Lord Bassington Bassington, one of few Norwegians whose taste in headwear can stand up to that of Ronny (he wears a fez), once perfectly described “Blue Cabaret”: “If I had cruised down the Autobahn in a Porsche, and this song was playing on the car stereo, I would have thought it was the Porsche itself singing.”