Kirsty MacColl imbued her songs with a sardonic and literate wit that had seldom been seen in British pop music since the sixties glory days of Ray Davies and the Kinks. Like Davies, Elvis Costello, Morrissey and Ian Dury, her kitchen-sink realism was funny, subversive and endearingly catchy. Her career was a symbolic rescue mission to retrieve British pop music from all that was saccharine and shallow, transforming it instead into a defiant creature of intelligence and wit.
The daughter of a folk music legend, the late iconoclast Ewan MacColl, and the former wife of top producer Steve Lillywhite, Kirsty nevertheless fought to be appreciated and enjoyed on her own terms alone. She was a craftswoman who learned classical guitar and violin as a child, listened to the rock of Frank Zappa and Neil Young, the pop harmonies of the Beach Boys, and the punk of the Ramones. While still a teenager, she signed to the visionary indie label Stiff, and conquered the UK pop charts.
Kirsty battled stage fright, depression and writer's block to create a career that gave her critical credibility and popular appeal. She worked with a legion of people across pop and rock including the Rolling Stones, Talking Heads, Van Morrison, the Smiths, Billy Bragg, Robert Plant, Simple Minds and the Happy Mondays. Her duet with Shane MacGowan of the Pogues, "Fairytale of New York" is regarded as one of the best Christmas songs of all time.
Kirsty MacColl's untimely death in a tragic boating accident in Mexico, in December 2000, robbed her family and friends of a much-loved woman, and the music industry of an artist who was still in her prime. She was 41 years old.
The One and Only is the first biography of Kirsty MacColl. The story of her life and work is told with full access to her family, closest friends and musical collaborators. It's the story of a life lived to the full, of love and loss, of family and fame, and of the fight for justice that followed her death. It's the tale of a special talent - and a unique woman.
