YMMV / Patti Smith

• Americans Hate Tingle: Johnny Rotten openly mocked Smith's first London performance for her bohemian, "hippie" appearance, compared with the working class orientation of British punk. (Patti comes from a working class background too, but he didn't know that or care.)
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty, Patti's lead guitarist and drummer respectively. They've appeared on all (all but one in Kaye's case) of her albums and still continue to perform live with her to this day. Patti herself would tell you that they've been vital to her music for her entire career.
• Fan Nickname: "The Godmother of Punk".
• First Installment Wins: While there are some great albums (particularly the next two), there's a general consensus that Horses has guaranteed her place in music history.
• Les Yay: Smith's cover of "Gloria" can be seen as being about a female-on-female one night stand. Similarly for "Debbie Denise", a song she wrote for Blue Öyster Cult, though it underwent a sex-change when BOC performed it. There was also a photo shoot that implied this with Lizzy Mercier Descloux (a famous No Wave artist). In her autobiography she claims to be completely straight, though.
• Refrain from Assuming: The "Horses! Horses! Horses! Horses!" song on Horses is actually called "Land." To further confuse matters, the song "Distant Fingers" on Radio Ethiopia has the chorus "Land, land, land." It's about having romance with an alien and leaving with him in his spaceship.
  All my earthly dreams are shattered/ I'm so tired, I quit/ Take me forever, it doesn't matter/ Deep inside of your ship.
• Signature Song: "Gloria" from Horses for the songs in her typical genre, but overall "Because the Night" from Easter wins, although it's sort of a Black Sheep Hit.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Pissing In A River" from Radio Ethiopia.
  • Also "Birdland", from Horses and "Ghost Dance" from Easter.
• The Woobie: For a spell in 1994, when the poor woman lost her husband, brother and long-time keyboardist all within a few months. Allen Lanier's death in 2013 saw her reunite with the Blue Öyster Cult for several gigs. As Allen knew the end was coming, this was the last time they were to work together, and both knew it.
• Values Dissonance: Her use of the N-word in that one song may have been well-intentioned, but in today's more politically charged atmosphere it's less likely that people would accept a white woman using racist slurs, particularly one directed at Jimi Hendrix.