The Top Ten Songs of Kirsty MacColl

The Top Ten Songs of Kirsty MacColl

With a selection of her albums currently out on re-release from Salvo, our man Fergal Kinney takes a look at Kirsty MacColl’s finest moments

“I’ve been the token woman all my life, the token daughter and the token wife”

‘Bad’, Kirsty MacColl, 1994

DESCRIBED by Bono as “one in a line of great English songwriters that includes Ray Davies, Paul Weller and Morrissey”, whilst praised for possessing “all the wit of Ray Davies and the harmonic invention of the Beach Boys” by occasional songwriting partner Johnny Marr, it remains something of a curiosity that the late Kirsty MacColl is remembered primarily for the songs penned by others that gave her chart success. Few songs have endured in the British consciousness quite as strongly as ‘Fairytale of New York’ – in no small part down to the humour and heartbreak omnipresent in Kirsty’s virtuoso vocal performance – but Kirsty MacColl’s own writing appears too often as something of an afterthought to her memory. In another time and dealt a different hand, MacColl would have enjoyed the same universal acclaim and success as Amy Winehouse or Adele, and it’s easy to contest that her voice – both vocally and lyrically – eclipses both of the aforementioned. To have been written out of the cast of British pop history is but one of a long line of setbacks and misfortunes in the life of Kirsty MacColl, a career forever held back by everything from record label politics to her own crippling stage fright. Here, we pay tribute to a uniquely talented British songwriter and offer what we consider to be her best ten songs:

‘They Don’t Know’

Amidst the death throws of British punk, Stiff records released ‘They Don’t Know’ in 1979 by a young singer songwriter who was incidentally also the daughter of the folk singer Ewan MacColl. Throughout her life, Kirsty would be notably critical of any insinuation that her father stood as an influence, mentor or indeed of much help to her career. Ewan MacColl saw pop music as essentially of no merit, and his views on punk were even more damning. Totally different to anything else in 1979, ‘They Don’t Know’ was three minutes of glistening pop perfection; all Beach Boys harmonies and the morbid teenage heartache of the Shangri La’s. The song received huge airplay but through a cruel cocktail of coincidence and bad luck (a constant in the career and life of Kirsty MacColl), a distributors’ strike prevented the record from being pressed and hitting the shops. Though the song would later provide a top 5 hit for Tracy Ullman, the writing credits to this blissful masterstroke of pop will always be MacColl’s.

‘There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis’

An exercise in great titles and unthrowawayable throwaway pop, this rockabilly pastiche would provide the twenty year old MacColl with her first bona fide hit in 1981. Though an obviously tongue-in-cheek lyric, ‘Chip Shop’ is the first in what would be a long line of songs about romantic mistrust and misadventure. Sadly, the next few years would see MacColl flit to and from Stiff Records at their whim, failing to provide adequate promotional support to her releases and even shelving the release of a finished album (the now released ‘Desperate Character’). It would be on Stiff that MacColl’s re-imagining of Billy Bragg’s ‘A New England’ would be released in 1985, propelling her (and consequently Bragg) to greater success. However, despite the success of ‘A New England’, Stiff calamitously went bankrupt the next year, leaving MacColl unable to release through Stiff but legally prohibited from signing with another label. MacColl was once again unable to capitalise on a hit record, and this period of injunction induced inactivity would prove a low point for MacColl personally, with frequent bouts of depression.

‘Free World’

By the end of the 1980’s, Kirsty’s voice had reached a global audience with the huge success of her Christmas duet with the Pogues, ‘Fairytale of New York’. The unexpected success of ‘Fairytale of New York’ heralded a renewed interest in MacColl matched by a returned confidence and an impressive stockpile of songs. MacColl was finally free to sign a new record deal and, in new husband Steve Lilywhite, had a producer who not only recognised her vocal vision but had the ability to realise it – MacColl’s 1989 album ‘Kite’ would be a personal success for Kirsty and her husband, applauded by a once indifferent music industry. ‘Free World’ is a powerful example of MacColl’s scope as an artist; vocally the song soars but it’s the anger of the lyric that packs the biggest punch. Ten years on from the arrival at Downing Street of Margaret Thatcher, ‘Free World’ is a defiant cry against the changes that Thatcher had promoted in society – described by Kirsty as a song directly about the ideology of “grab whatever you can and sod the little guy, that’s a fashionable way of looking at things, and I don’t agree with it.” A brazen yet sophisticated political attack, it’s notable that amongst other tracks on ‘Kite’, ‘Free World’ was the first time that prominent socialist Ewan MacColl began to take his daughter’s work seriously.

Don’t Come the Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim!

The depiction of women in pop music had long been a bone of contention to MacColl, explaining in an interview that “women, especially, would always be singing these songs, when I was a kid; you’d hear them on the radio, and the songs were obviously written by a man and he was actually putting his words into the woman’s mouth and he’s making her out to be how he wants to perceive women, and not how women are. So where are all of these pathetic women who can’t live without their man? I don’t know any!”. ‘Don’t Come the Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim’ is an antidote to pop’s once dominant culture of misogyny and misrepresentation, an acerbic critique of those with “warm beds and cold, cold hearts” to an infectious country-flavoured waltz.

Still Life

‘Kite’ would provide MacColl with her first solo top five single since ‘A New England’, with a cover of the Kinks classic ‘Days’. It’s b-side has much of the pained nostalgia and English melancholia of ‘Days’, including also a clear nod to the Smiths’ ‘Still Ill’ in a reference to “underneath the bridge where we once kissed”. ‘Still Life’ is a lament to a love now lost, ‘a relic of the past’ like the town where the love first blossomed. MacColl’s voice has never sounded more vulnerable than here, with a sparse musical accompaniment making stark the beauty and dexterity of her lyric.

Fifteen Minutes

A lesser known album track from 1989’s ‘Kite’, ‘Fifteen Minutes’ is as close to Ray Davies as MacColl ever achieved. Like the ‘Something Else’ era Ray Davies character songs (‘Two Sisters’, ‘David Watts’, ‘Plastic Man’), ‘Fifteen Minutes’ is a short study of the vacuous victims of the union between pop music and tabloid newspapers; the media world where mediocrity  and misogyny are the currency for “vicious boys and their boring girls”. Men were a constant source of disappointment for MacColl in her personal life, something reflected regularly in her lyrics. Collaborator and producer Mark Nevin would comment that “it was an underlying thing that colored the way she saw the world”, and half joked that her lyrics were “in a nutshell” that “all blokes are gonna lie, cheat and let you down.”

My Affair

Two years on from ‘Kite’, MacColl would record the ‘Electric Landlady’ album – the title coming from a quip of Johnny Marr’s. ‘Electric Landlady’ lacked the consistency of ‘Kite’, but would provide hits in the form of ‘My Affair’ and ‘Walking Down Madison’ (see below). Mark Nevin, of Fairground Attraction fame, penned the exuberant Latino track specifically for MacColl, tapping into her burgeoning love of the music of South America . Lyrically, ‘My Affair’ is perhaps Kirsty’s master work – an epic odyssey of sex and independence charted through youth and womanhood. Pop has never been very good at acknowledging that not everybody is a teenager in love and that very, very many record buyers are married, divorced, intelligent, independent, over thirty or parents. ‘My Affair’ is an explosive celebration of post-divorce rediscovery of womanhood; “It’s very Fifties Havana, that one”, said MacColl at the time, ”Carmen MacColl doing her damndest. The bitch is back…”

Walking Down Madison

Walking Down Madison’ began life as an instrumental jam by Johnny Marr, and found its way via Kirsty MacColl to #4 on the Billboard Rock Charts in the US.

The two had worked together for a few songs on ‘Kite’, though ‘Walking Down Madison’ was a notable step up for both of them. Incidentally, MacColl was the only artist to have worked with both Johnny Marr and Morrissey following the split of the Smiths, providing backing vocals on Morrissey’s ‘Interesting Drug’ single.

The original Johnny Marr composition was not intended to feature lyrics, let alone those of Kirsty MacColl, though after having lived with it for a week and penned some of her most evocative lyrics – somewhere between Ray Davies and rapping – it was clear that ‘Walking Down Madison’ in its new form was its best.

Similar to the contradictions of British inequality documented in ‘Free World’, ‘Walking Down Madison’ is a portrait of New York life and the ease with which a life ‘in an uptown apartment’ could become ‘a knife on the A train’. The song proved a huge hit in the US, its observations striking a chord with an American audience as much as the infectious groove became a dancefloor staple, and still gains airplay and recognition across the Atlantic to this day.

My Affair

‘Walking Down Madison’ began life as an instrumental jam by Johnny Marr, and found its way via Kirsty MacColl to #4 on the Billboard Rock Charts in the US. The two had worked together for a few songs on ‘Kite’, though ‘Walking Down Madison’ was the clear zenith of their partnership. Incidentally, MacColl was the only artist to have worked with both Johnny Marr and Morrissey following the split of the Smiths, providing backing vocals on Morrissey’s ‘Interesting Drug’ single. The original Johnny Marr composition was not intended to feature lyrics, let alone those of Kirsty MacColl, though MacColl became obsessed with the track and quickly wrote lyrics amongst her most evocative for the track. Similar to the contradictions of British inequality documented in ‘Free World’, ‘Walking Down Madison’ is a portrait of New York life and the ease with which a life ‘in an uptown apartment’ could become ‘a knife on the A train’. The song proved a huge hit in the US, its observations of poverty in post-Reagan America striking a chord with its audience as much as the infectious groove which would make this track a dancefloor staple at the time that still gains airplay across the Atlantic to this day.

Soho Square

By 1994, Kirsty found herself in the midst of an emotionally grueling split from Steve Lilywhite. Pairing again with Mark Nevin – his own marriage coincidentally in terminal breakdown – the two began a project that Nevin would later describe as their ‘paddle’. Initially intended for a new band comprising of Nevin and MacColl, ‘Titanic Days’ was released as a Kirsty MacColl solo album, and is an often brutal reflection of the turbulence of its authors lives at the time. Though thunderous opener ‘You Know It’s You’ is one of the record’s clear highlights, it’s the chiming and exuberant ‘Soho Square’ that stands as one of MacColl’s finest ever recordings, complete with rushing strings and a multi-tracked wall of sound career best vocal from MacColl.

England 2, Columbia 0

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In the late nineties, once again single and without a record deal, Kirsty relocated do Cuba, motivated by a burning interest in South American music and a fascination with the left-wing politics of the Communist state. Moving to Cuba also drew a line under the incredibly difficult years which ‘Titanic Days’ had documented with painful honesty. “The fact that ‘My Affair’ had been the most fun I’d ever had in the studio led to me wanting to do more of that,” explained MacColl at the time, “it just took this long for me to get it together because I wanted to know more of what I was doing before I embarked on that road. I had to learn about that music by listening to an awful lot of stuff and visiting the countries where it came from.” In many ways, Cuba was a total re-invigoration for Kirsty MacColl artistically, as she lyrically continued to document the trials of womanhood and age. ‘England 2, Columbia 0’ is a pugnacious and sharp account of a date with a man who would be revealed to MacColl as married. The song was written and recorded within days of the date, the humiliation and indignation still raw in her vocal performance. ‘England 2, Columbia 0’ was the lead single from the album ‘Tropical Brainstorm’ in March 2000, which would once again be met with critical acclaim and moderate chart success. This is perhaps MacColl’s most effective expressions of frustration and downright rage against yet another man to bring her heartache.

The most sad and cruel twist of fate in the life of Kirsty MacColl came just months after the release of ‘Tropical Brainstorm’. On 18^thDecember 2000, MacColl was holidaying in Cozumel, Mexico; scuba-diving in a specific diving area on the Chankanaab reef where watercrafts where strictly prohibited. Surfacing from a dive, MacColl saw a speedboat hurtling through the diving area towards her songs. Pushing her sons out the path of the boat, MacColl was caught by the boat and killed instantly. Her death generated a swell of grief from her friends, family and global fanbase, but the circumstances through which she died and the grave injustice that followed added great insult to a profound loss. The boat belonged to a Mexican supermarket multimillionaire who, though found guilty of using a speedboat in a prohibited area, escaped conviction with a fine to the equivalent value of £61. MacColl’s mother, Jean Newlove, campaigned for years after MacColl’s death for the wealthy Mexican businessman responsible for her daughter’s passing to be held to account. Tributes to Kirsty MacColl in recent years have included a memorial bench in Soho Square (where fans gather annually to commemorate MacColl’s music) and a memorial concert at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 2011. Across ‘Desperate Character’, ‘Kite’, ‘Electric Landlady’, ‘Titanic Days’ and ‘Tropical Brainstorm’, Kirsty MacColl is revealed to be a shining light of British pop songwriting and one that remains greatly missed.

Rest in peace, Kirsty MacColl (1959 – 2000)

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