James Newell Osterberg Jr. (born April 21, 1947), known professionally as Iggy Pop, is an American singer, musician, songwriter, actor and radio broadcaster.

Although Pop has had limited commercial success, he has remained a culture icon and a significant influence on a wide range of musicians in numerous genres.

[15] His solo album The Idiot has been cited as a major influence on a number of post-punk, electronic and industrial artists including Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails and Joy Division,[16] and was described by Siouxsie Sioux as a "re-affirmation that our suspicions were true: the man is a genius.

[10] Ron Asheton later described him as having been a conventional teenager: "He hung out with the popular kids that wore chinos, cashmere sweaters, and penny loafers.

[22] In a 2007 Rolling Stone interview, he explained his relationship with his parents and their contribution to his music: Once I hit junior high in Ann Arbor, I began going to school with the son of the president of Ford Motor Company, with kids of wealth and distinction.

[23]Osterberg began his music career as a drummer in various high school bands in Ann Arbor, Michigan, including the Iguanas, who covered several records such as Bo Diddley's "Mona" in 1965.

In 1971, without a record deal, the Stooges kept performing in small clubs with a five-piece lineup that included both Ron Asheton and James Williamson on guitars and Jimmy Recca on bass, Pop having fired Dave Alexander the previous year when he turned up for a gig unable to play because of his chronic alcoholism.

Bowie helped write and produce The Idiot and Lust for Life, Pop's two most acclaimed albums as a solo artist, the latter featuring one of his best-known songs, "The Passenger".

During his anarchic performance of "I'm Bored", Pop made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was lip-synching (shoving the microphone down his pants at one point), and he even tried to grab the teenage girls in the audience.

He was also interviewed by host Molly Meldrum, an exchange which was frequently punctuated by the singer jumping up and down on his chair and making loud exclamations of "G'day mate" in a mock Australian accent.

[citation needed] The groundbreaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's ideas of Nostalgia for the Future in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s.

Working with rock attorney Stann Findelle, Pop scored more movie soundtrack inclusions in 1989: "Living on the Edge of the Night" in the Ridley Scott thriller Black Rain; and "Love Transfusion", a song originally written by Alice Cooper (who does backing vocals) and Desmond Child,[46] in Wes Craven's Shocker.

Also in 1990, Pop sang the role of "The Prosecutor" for the POINT Music/Philips Classics recording (released in 1992) of composer John Moran's multimedia opera[47] The Manson Family.

In 1997, he remixed Raw Power to give it a rougher, more hard-edged sound; fans had complained for years that Bowie's official "rescue effort" mix was muddy and lacking in bass.

The same year he appeared on Hashisheen: The End of Law, a collaborative effort by Bill Laswell, reading on the tracks "The Western Lands" and "A Quick Trip to Alamut".

Pop's 2003 album Skull Ring featured collaborators Sum 41, Green Day, Peaches, and the Trolls, as well as Ron and Scott Asheton, reuniting the three surviving founding members of the Stooges for the first time since 1974.

Having enjoyed working with the Ashetons on Skull Ring, Pop reformed the Stooges, with bassist Mike Watt (formerly of the Minutemen) filling in for the late Dave Alexander and Fun House saxophonist Steve Mackay rejoining the lineup.

and Grand Theft Auto IV,[58] which also included the Stooges song "I Wanna Be Your Dog" (though the game's manual credited Iggy Pop as the artist).

[62] He appeared as a character in the video game Lego Rock Band to sing his song "The Passenger" and also lent his voice for the in-game tutorial.

[63] With reference to the song "The Passenger", Pop has appeared on NZ television advertising phone networks, showing that he could get a band to play together by conference call.

In 2011 he teamed up with the Lilies, a collaboration between Sergio Dias of Os Mutantes and French group Tahiti Boy & The Palmtree Family, to record the single "Why?".

[4] In April 2020, he released an alternate mix of his "China Girl", as part of a seven-disc deluxe box set, due to feature expanded remastered versions of The Idiot and Lust for Life.

[93] "Frenzy" was released late 2022 ahead of Pop's nineteenth studio album Every Loser: the track featured Duff McKagan and Chad Smith.

[97] As an actor Pop has appeared in a number of movies, including Sid and Nancy (a non-speaking cameo role), The Color of Money, Hardware (voice only), The Crow: City of Angels, The Rugrats Movie, Snow Day, Coffee and Cigarettes (opposite Tom Waits, in the third segment of the film, "Somewhere in California"), Cry-Baby, Dead Man, Tank Girl and Atolladero, a Spanish science fiction Western.

Pop has been profiled in several rockumentaries and has had songs on many soundtracks, including Crocodile Dundee II; Trainspotting; Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; Haggard; Arizona Dream; Repo Man; Black Rain; Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare; Shocker; and Kurt Cobain: About a Son.

[104] In it he covers an eclectic range of music from punk to jazz, and champions new artists such as Shame, Fat White Family, False Heads, and Sleaford Mods.

[105] Based on Kai Grehn [de]'s German translation of Walt Whitman's poetry cycle in 2005, a radio drama and bilingual double-CD audio book "Kinder Adams/Children of Adam" was released by Hörbuch Hamburg in 2014, including a complete reading by Pop.

[106] In 2015, Pop had a starring role as Vicious in the Björn Tagemose-directed silent film Gutterdämmerung opposite Grace Jones, Henry Rollins and Lemmy.

[115] In 2021 Pop appeared with Nico Rosberg – 2016 Formula One champion – in a video advert for the German State Railways' (Deutsche Bahn) high-speed train services.

[159] A photo of Pop on stage with fans at the Sydney Opera House in 2019 taken by Antoine Veling won the Culture Category of the Sony World Photography Awards.