Annabella Lwin (born Myant Myant Aye; 31 October 1966) is an Anglo-Burmese singer, songwriter, and record producer best known as the lead singer of Bow Wow Wow. In 1980, at the age of fourteen, she was spotted by a friend of Malcolm McLaren singing at the dry cleaning premises in North London where she worked part-time. Following her successful audition for the lead singer position in McLaren’s new group (the yet-to-be-named band Bow Wow Wow), he had her transfer from a mixed comprehensive school in London to the Sylvia Young Theatre School. Lwin later caused controversy the following year by posing nude for the cover of the group’s first full-length album. (More from Wikipedia)
It is not unprecedented for the front man of a rock band to adopt that name as his new surname. When the British new wave band Adam and the Ants was formed in 1977 (originally called simply the Ants), the chief songwriter and lead singer was known to the world as “Adam” – he was born Stuart Leslie Goddard. Although Goddard had apparently taken the name Adam Ant before forming the band, I don’t remember anyone calling him that until he started his solo career. Of course that left Adam Ant’s former bandmates in the Ants in the lurch; however, Malcolm McLaren – best known as the manager of the Sex Pistols – recruited them to back a barely pubescent Anglo-Burmese singer that he later discovered named Annabella Lwin (that’s not her real name either as I recall, though I can’t seem to find the info online anymore). The resulting band Bow Wow Wow is one of my favorites from the early 1980’s.
(August 2013)
