Marianne Faithfull, the songstress who helped spur music's British invasion and was a muse to the Rolling Stones, died Thursday at 78.

The pop icon and celebrated torch singer Marianne Faithfull has died. The blonde, voluptuous Faithfull was an international celebrity before age 20 when she covered one of the first songs written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards,

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