Marianne Faithfull

Three of her ten planets sit in fire signs, three in water, and two apiece in earth and air. Nothing is scarce. The record gives Faithfull As Tears Go By at seventeen and then Broken English at thirty three, and calls the second a wholly different voice.

The Sun sits on the eighth degree of Capricorn with Mars two degrees further on, and the Moon answers from Pisces at thirteen. Capricorn works to a plan and expects to pay for it; Pisces keeps no edge of its own at all. For a singer whose record is two voices sixteen years apart rather than one developed over a career, that pairing holds both: the Capricorn half that endured it and the Pisces half that let the first voice dissolve entirely.

Mercury is tied to two planets at once. It makes an easy skill of its contact with Neptune at a third of a degree and stands at a strained angle to Saturn at half, so speech is on effortless terms with the planet of image and pressed against the planet of limit in the same breath. A yod holds the Moon, Neptune and Pluto without resolving. Saturn, Uranus and Pluto were all retrograde when she was born. In a singer, speech tied to image and to limit at once is the pairing that made a second voice possible.

She died in London on 30 January 2025, at seventy eight. Saturn rules her Capricorn Sun, and that day it stood square her natal Uranus. The Sun itself made easy contact with her natal Neptune at a tenth of a degree, the closest thing in that sky, and Jupiter did the same at over half. Uranus stood directly opposite her natal Venus. The Moon was new and one per cent lit. That is the phase that starts things without waiting to see the whole of them. For a record built on two voices rather than one, a speech planet tied to image and to limit at the same time is the aspect that made the second voice possible, and the yod on her Moon is why neither of them ever quite settled.