Kirsty MacColl ( October 10, 1959 – December 18, 2000), was a British pop singer-songwriter.
MacColl was the daughter of dancer Jean Newlove and noted folk singer Ewan MacColl, and 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.)
