Patti Smith

Patricia Lee Smith was born December 30, 1946, and grew up fusing two things that rarely sat together: the voltage of rock and the precision of poetry. In 1975, Horses arrived and made her an influential force in the New York City punk rock movement, not through volume alone but through the way she wired language into sound. Three years later, "Because the Night," co-written with Bruce Springsteen, reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five in the UK - her most widely known song. In 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; in 2010, she won the National Book Award for Just Kids, a memoir written to fulfill a promise to Robert Mapplethorpe, her longtime partner and friend. Rolling Stone ranked her 47th on its 100 Greatest Artists list that same year.