Stuart Leslie Goddard chose the stage name Adam Ant because:

I am muscly like Michelangelo’s Birth of Adam. Ants because they are survivors.

He began his music career in 1976 in London during the Punk movement where he fronted Adam and the Ants. The band found success in the early 1980s, scoring eight top 20 hits in the UK (one of which almost reached the top 40 in the US).

In 1982, Ant went solo, later giving the reason that the band was ‘exhausted’, and gained international success with his first two solo albums, with several singles (including"Goody Two Shoes", “Friend Or Foe” and “Puss ‘N Boots”) reaching the top 30 in several countries.

His third album Vive Le Rock was less successful than his previous two. Aside from its first single “Apollo 9” doing well in the UK, the album made little impact otherwise. Ant’s participation in the international event Live Aid was reduced to performing one song, leading him to later call it “a waste of fucking time” and “the end of rock and roll”.

Ant then focused on his acting career for the next five years. In 1990, Ant released Manners & Physique, a departure from his previous sound, which spawned the UK and US top 20 hit “Room At The Top”. 1995’s Wonderful showed a more mature side of Ant and featured more acoustic guitar than his previous works. Its title track reached the top 40 in the UK and the US. During this time, he suffered a mental breakdown, caused in part by the harassment of a dangerous female stalker.

Over the next fifteen years, Ant recorded a number of demos and released various charity singles sporadically, but found himself deeply embroiled in legal trouble, charged with criminal damage and intent to cause fear of violence. His visits to mental hospitals earned him the title of one of the ‘most troubled pop stars (the UK) has ever produced’ with BBC Channel 4 airing The Madness of Prince Charming about him.

In the 2010s, Ant returned to music, revisiting his old hits and deep album tracks with new arrangements in live performances. In 2013, he released Adam Ant is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter, explaining that he “just missed (making music)”, calling it “a slightly different record, quite a bizarre record, different than any record I’d ever made before”. He announced in 2014 that his next album and single would both be titled Bravest Of The Brave, but as of 2018 it was still “a work in progress”. Ant extended a 2019 US tour into 2020, and the album is reportedly finished but still not available.