Kirsty MacColl
Kirsty MacColl (10 October 1959 - 18 December 2000), was a British pop singer-songwriter.
Family life and career
MacColl was the daughter of dancer Jean Newlove and noted folk singer Ewan MacColl. Her father had been spied on by MI5 because of his alleged links with communism. She grew up in Croydon.
Her initial career followed a substantially different path than that of her father; she first came to notice when Stiff Records released an EP by the band the Drug Addix, a punk-pop band she fronted under the pseudonym Mandy Doubt. Label executives were not impressed with the band but liked her and signed her to a solo deal.
Her debut solo single "They Don't Know", released in 1979, was an huge airplay hit in the UK, but never reached the shops due to a distributors' strike. After another single, "You Caught Me Out" failed to chart, MacColl felt she lacked Stiff's full backing and moved to Polydor Records in 1981. She had a UK Top 20 hit with the witty yet meaningful "There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis," taken from her critically acclaimed debut album Desperate Character.
Lasting success again failed to materialise and in 1983 Polydor dropped her just as she had completed recording the songs for a planned second album. She returned to Stiff, where pop singles such as "Terry" and "He's On the Beach" went nowhere but a cover of Billy Bragg's "A New England" in 1985 got to Number 7 in the UK charts. This included two extra verses specially written by Bragg for MacColl, and caused sniggering when she released it, as she had to sing the line "I loved you then as I love you still; Though I put you on a pedestal, You put me on the pill" while in the latter stages of pregnancy.
MacColl was probably most recognizable in the United States as the writer of "They Don't Know". Tracey Ullman's version, helped by a video guest-starring Paul McCartney, reached Number 2 in the UK in 1983 and the Top Ten in North America. (It was also played over the closing credits of Ullman's HBO show Tracey Takes On for much of the show's run.)
When Stiff went bankrupt in 1985, MacColl was left unable to record in her own right as no record company bought her contract from the Official Receiver. However, her talents meant she was rarely short of session work as a backing vocalist, and she frequently sang on records produced or engineered by her husband, Steve Lillywhite, including tracks for The Smiths, Van Morrison and Talking Heads, amongst others.
MacColl re-emerged in the British charts in December 1987, reaching Number 2 with The Pogues on "Fairytale of New York", a duet with Shane MacGowan. This led to her accompanying The Pogues on their British and European tour in 1988, an experience which she said helped her temporarily overcome her stage fright.
She then bounced back as a songwriter and artist of substance, with Kite (LP) in 1989, widely praised by critics and featuring David Gilmour and Johnny Marr. MacColl's lyrics addressed life in Margaret Thatcher's England on "Free World", ridiculed the vapidity of fame in "Fifteen Minutes", and addressed the vagaries of love in "Don't Come The Cowboy With Me, Sonny Jim!"
Although Kite contained many original compositions of great quality, MacColl's biggest success from the album would be the cover of The Kinks' song "Days", which gave her a UK Top 20 hit. A bonus track on the CD version of Kite was a cover of the Smiths song "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby". These songs, and MacColl's success with "A New England", garnered her a reputation as being a "cover queen".
During this time, MacColl was also featured on the British sketch comedy French and Saunders, appearing as herself and singing songs, including "15 Minutes" (from Kite), "I Ride" and, with Ken Bishop, the Frank and Nancy Sinatra hit "Something Stupid". She continued to write, releasing the album Electric Landlady (a play on the Jimi Hendrix album title Electric Ladyland), including her most successful chart hit in North America, "Walking Down Madison" (co-written with Marr and a Top 30 hit in the UK), in 1991. Despite its U.S. chart success, Landlady was not a hit for Virgin Records, and in 1992, when Virgin was sold to EMI, MacColl was dropped from the label.
She released Titanic Days, inspired by her divorce from Lillywhite, in 1994, but again, MacColl was at the mercy of the industry; ZTT Records had agreed to release the album as a "one-off" and declined to sign her to a contract. The following year she released two new singles on Virgin, "Caroline" and a cover of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" (a duet with Evan Dando), together with the "best of" compilation Galore.
Galore reached the Top 20 of the UK album charts, but neither of the new singles, nor a re-released "Days", made the Top 40. MacColl would not record again for several years; her frustration with the music business was exacerbated by a lengthy case of writer's block.
Several trips to Cuba restored MacColl's creative muse, and the world music-inspired (particularly Cuban and other Latin American forms) Tropical Brainstorm, often described as her finest work, was released in 2000. "Brainstorm" melded the Latinate music with her droll British lyrics to great effect. It included the song "In These Shoes", which garnered airplay in the U.S. and was covered by Bette Midler, featured in the HBO show Sex and the City and adopted by Catherine Tate as the theme tune for her BBC TV show.
MacColl's lyrics, at turns humorous, biting, and achingly sad, are hard to categorize, which sometimes presented a challenge to the commercial viability of her work. She developed a severe case of stage fright, which first struck during her early tours and which she never truly overcame. She was also devoted to her children, and would spend long periods of time away from the spotlight to focus on raising them.
MacColl's death and posthumous career
On 18 December 2000, while swimming in a restricted diving area with her family on a holiday in Cozumel, she was killed in a collision with a powerboat while managing to drag her son out of its path. The boat was owned by Mexican supermarket millionaire Guillermo González Nova (owner of Comercial Mexicana), who was on board with several members of his family.
A boathand, José Cen Yam, claimed to have been driving the boat and was found guilty of culpable homicide and, under Mexican law, allowed to pay a fine of 1034 pesos (about $90 USD) in lieu of a prison sentence of that many days. However, eyewitnesses contradict Cen Yam's claim to have been driving and also González Nova's claim that the boat was travelling at a speed of only one knot.
MacColl's family are campaigning for a judicial review into the events surrounding her death, including an application to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The BBC has featured on several of its channels a documentary by Olivia Lichtenstein, entitled Who Killed Kirsty MacColl?
Since MacColl's death, Billy Bragg has always included "her" extra verses when performing "A New England". She was honored in 2002 with a memorial concert in London at the Royal Festival Hall, featuring a number of musicians that had worked with her, or been influenced by her.
In 2001, a bench was placed by the southern entrance to London's Soho Square as a memorial to her, after a lyric from one of her most poignant songs: "An empty bench in Soho Square/ If you'd have come you'd have found me there".
MacColl continues to receive media exposure; in 2004 a biography of MacColl authored by Karen O'Brien, Kirsty MacColl:The One and Only, was published. As for her music, a retrospective three-CD set spanning her full career, From Croydon To Cuba, was released in 2005. Titanic Days was re-released in 2005 as a deluxe 2CD set, and Kite and Electric Landlady were also remastered and rereleased with additional tracks. Her first album Desperate Character remains out of print, but some tracks from that work were included in the box set. On 7 August 2005, The Best of Kirsty MacColl (a single-disc version of From Croydon To Cuba, including the 'new' single "Sun on the Water") made its debut on the UK album charts at #17.
Fairytale of New York was rereleased in the United Kingdom in December 2005 with half of the proceeds being donated to the Justice for Kirsty Campaign.
Discography
* Desperate Character (July 1981)
* Kite (April 1989)
* Electric Landlady (June 1991)
* Titanic Days (February 1994)
* Galore (March 1995)
* Tropical Brainstorm (March 2000)
There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis
Oh darling why'd you talk so fast
Another evening just flew past tonight
And now the daybreak's coming in
And I can't win and it ain't right
You tell me all you've done and seen
And all the places you have been without me
Well I don't really want to know
But I'll stay quiet and then I'll go
And you won't have no cause to think about me
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
Just like you swore to me that you'd be true
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you
Oh darling you're so popular
You were the best thing new in Hicksville ...
With your mohair suits and foreign shoes
News is you changed your Pick-up for a Seville
And now I'm lying here alone
'Cause you're out there on the phone
To some star in New York
I can hear you laughing now and
I can't help feeling that somehow
You don't mean anything you say at all
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
Just like you swore to me that you'd be true
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
Just like you swore to me that you'd be true
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you
I said he's a liar and I'm not sure about you
I said he's a liar and I'm not sure about you
He's a liar and I'm not sure about you
I'm Going Out With An 80 Year Old Millionaire
He buys me movies and I am the star
He sends me to work in a black shiny car
The girls in the chorus are jealous as hell
But I find it pays when you kiss and you tell
So I jetset around from one place to another
With lots of young geezers he thinks are my brothers
Britt's got her toy boys but I don't care
'Cos I'm going out with an 80 year old millionaire
The friends I once knew are a thing of the past
I can't stop to talk 'cos I'm moving too fast
I go to the shops with a chauffeur sometimes
He waits in the car 'cos it saves on the fines
Well you might think that when he's so rich that seems funny
But he got that way 'cos he's careful with money
Zsa Zsa's quite gaga but I don't care
'Cos I'm going out with an 80 year old millionaire
He won't last much longer if he keeps drinking gin
I filled up the bottle that's marked medicine
He says that he'll leave all his empire to me
And sitting on top is the best place to be
So don't get impatient now boys you must wait
We'll all have such fun when I own the estate
Britt's got her toy boys but I don't care
'Cos I'm going out with an 80 year old millionaire
Reporters all ask me if I'd ever switch
But I'd never leave him 'cos he's far too rich
You might want to punch me but you won't dare
'Cos I'm going out with an 80 year old millionaire
There's just one thing better than an old millionaire
That's a young millionairess and I'm almost there!
Don't Come The Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim!
Some boys with warm beds and cold, cold hearts
Can make you feel nothing at all
They'll never remember and they'll never mind
If you're counting the cracks in the wall
They're quick and they're greedy
They never feel guilty
They don't know the meaning of hurt
The boots just go back on
The socks that had stayed on
The next time they see you
They treat you like dirt
The next time they treat you like dirt
Now don't come the cowboy with me Sonny Jim
I know lots of those and you're not one of them
There's a light in your eyes tells me somebody's in
And you won't come the cowboy with me
Don't be too rough on my cold, cold heart
It's all I've got left to me now
I fell out of favour with Heaven somewhere
And I'm here for the hell of it now
Some girls play cowboys
And some boys play harder to get
But they're got just the same
They smile and say cheese
They're so eager to please
But they'll never remember your name
The names and the places all change
But don't come the cowboy with me Sonny Jim
I know lots of those and you're not one of them
There's a light in your eyes tells me somebody's in
And you won't come the cowboy with me
Did somebody tell you I'm lonely as hell?
I didn't expect you to know me so well
If I learned a lesson it's how to bounce back again
Sometimes I bounce off the wall
And sometimes my head hits the floor
So don't come the cowboy with me Sonny Jim
I know lots of those and you're not one of them
There's a light in your eyes tells me somebody's in
And you won't come the cowboy, oh
Don't come the cowboy with me Sonny Jim
I know lots of those and you're not one of them
There's a light in your eyes tells me somebody's in
And you won't come the cowboy with me
