The singer, who died on Thursday at 78, spent decades in the spotlight exercising a very specific and subversive power.

Marianne Faithfull, an icon of 1960s British rock whose career went on to stretch seven decades, is dead at 78. Faithfull died “peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family,” a spokesperson told the BBC.

Marianne Faithfull, the British pop star, muse, libertine and old soul who inspired and helped write some of the Rolling Stones’ greatest songs and endured as a torch singer and survivor of the lifestyle she once embodied,