Kirsty MacColl was one of David’s ealry favourites along with Leonard Cohen (eclectic or what!) She was the daughter of folk singer Ewan MacColl and dancer Jean Newlove. Her father was born in England of Scottish parents. She and her brother, Hamish MacColl, grew up with their mother in Croydon, where Kirsty attended Park Hill Primary School, Monks Hill High School and John Newnham High School, making appearances in school plays. She came to notice when Chiswick Records released an EP by local punk rock band the Drug Addix (originally called Tooting Fruities) with MacColl on backing vocals (The Drug Addix Make A Record) under the pseudonym Mandy Doubt (1978). Stiff Records executives were not impressed with the band, but liked her and subsequently signed her to a solo deal.
Her debut solo single “They Don’t Know”, released in 1979, peaked at number two on the Music Week airplay chart. However, a distributors’ strike prevented copies of the single getting into record stores, and the single consequently failed to appear on the Uk Singles Chart. MacColl recorded a follow-up single, “You Caught Me Out”, but felt she lacked Stiff Records’s full backing, and left the label shortly before the song was to be released. The single was pulled, and only a few “white label” promo copies of the single are known to exist. MacColl moved to Polydor Records in 1981. She had a number 14 UK hit with “There’s a Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis”, from her critically acclaimed debut album Desperate Character.
In 1983, Polydor dropped her just as she had completed recording the songs for a planned second album (to be called Real) which used more synthesizers and had new wave-styled tracks. She returned to Stiff, where pop singles such as “Terry” and “He’s on the Beach” were unsuccessful, but a cover of Billy Bragg’s “A New England” in 1985 reached number 7 on the UK charts. This included two extra verses specially written for her by Bragg. Also around this time, MacColl wrote and performed the theme song “London Girls” for Cannel 4’s short-lived sitcom Dream Stuffing (1984).
When Stiff Records went bankrupt in 1986, MacColl was left unable to record in her own right, as no record company bought her contract from the official receiver. However, she had regular session work as a backing vocalist, and she frequently sang on records produced or engineered by her husband, Steve Lillywhite. MacColl re-emerged in the British charts in December 1987, reaching Number 2 with The Pogues on “Fairytale of New York”, singing 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.
After the contract issue was resolved, MacColl returned to recording as a solo artist and received critical acclaim upon the release of Kite (LP) in 1989. MacColl’s biggest chart success from the album was the cover of The Kinks song “Days”, which gave her a UK Top 20 hit in July 1989. A bonus track on the CD version of Kite was a cover of the Smiths song “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby”.
During this time, MacColl featured on the British TV sketch comedy French and Saunders, appearing as herself. She continued to write and record, releasing the album Electric Landlady in 1991. The album’s title was coined by Johnny Marr as a play on the Jimi Hendrix album title Electric Ladyland. It included her most successful chart hit in North America, “Walking Down Madison”, co-written with Marr and a Top 30 hit in the UK. Despite the song’s 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.
MacColl released Titanic Days, informed by her failing marriage with Lillywhite, in 1993, but ZTT Records had agreed only to release the album as a “one-off” and declined to sign her to a contract. In 1995, she released a “best of” compilation Galore. Galore became MacColl’s only album to reach the top 10 in the Uk Albums Chart, but neither of the new singles, nor a re-released “Days”, made the Top 40. MacColl did not record again for several years; her frustration with the music business was exacerbated by a lengthy case of writer’s block. MacColl herself admitted that she was ready to give up her music career and become an English teacher in South America. In 2000 she was killed in boating accident whilst trying to save her older son.
