Kirsty MacColl

Kirsty MacColl (October 10, 1959 - December 18, 2000), daughter of folk singer Ewan MacColl and dancer Jean Newlove, was a British singer-songwriter, who died tragically while saving her son's life.

Her career with Stiff Records was uneventful and patchy to say the least.

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 in 1981, and a cover of Billy Bragg's A New England four years later, which got to Number 7. This included two extra verses written by MacColl, and caused sniggering when she released it, as she had to sing the line you put me on the Pill while heavily pregnant.

Her most famous writing credit was with They Don't Know which Tracey Ullman, helped by a video guest-starring Paul McCartney, took to the dizzy heights of Number 2 in 1983. MacColl's version, released in 1979 was an airplay hit, but never reached the shops due to a distributors' strike), MacColl never managed a full album on the label, and seemed to lack Stiff's full backing.

Pop singles such as Terry and He's On the Beach went nowhere, and MacColl's humourous pop lyrics were often lost on the British public. Her cause was not helped by severe stage fright, which first struck during her early tours and which she never truly overcame. She was also fiercely a proud family woman, and spent long periods away from work to care for her children.

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. (The couple later divorced.)

Kirsty re-emerged at the top of the British charts in December 1987 with The Pogues on Fairytale Of New York, a duet with Shane McGowan. She then bounced back as a songwriter and artist of substance, with the sublime Kite LP in 1989, widely praised by critics and featuring David Gilmour and Johnny Marr. She continued to write releasing the albums Titanic Days (1993), Electric Landlady (1995), and world music (particularly Cuban and other Latin American forms) inspired Tropical Brainstorm (2000), often described as her finest work.

On December 18, 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. No one has ever been held to account for the tragic accident and MacColl's family have been campaigning for a judicial review into the events surrounding her death.

Since MacColl's death, Billy Bragg has always included "her" extra verses when performing A New England.