Kirsty MacColl
The Best Of Kirsty MacColl

THE REVIEW

It is said that good blood doesn't lie, and in the case of Kirsty MacColl, it's perfectly true; her father Ewan was a great folksinger, who gave us masterpieces such as "Dirty Old Town", triumphantly covered by the Pogues and also by a young Donovan, "The First Time I Saw Your Face", covered by the great Gordon Lightfoot, and also "Ballad Of Accounting", "My Old Man", "Black And White", "The Shoals Of Herring" and "The Manchester Rambler". Growing up alongside such a father surely helped the beautiful Kirsty to develop her talent, which has evolved over the years, following entirely personal paths; her story is a fascinating one, the story of a small-great artist, lively, emotional, sincere, courageous, a story that ended prematurely in the worst possible way.

In almost twenty years of career, Kirsty MacColl released only five albums, few, but they were enough for her to leave a mark as an excellent pop pen and great female songwriter: in my humble opinion, in fact, the most burdensome limit of the so-called "pink" songwriters is undoubtedly the tendency to often propose boring laments stuffed with useless sophistications both musically and lyrically, generating dozens of failed imitators (and very often over-praised) of the great Joni Mitchell, luckily Kirsty was only and only concerned about being herself: Kirsty MacColl is joy, frankness, immediacy, irony; her songs are as simple and catchy as they are deep and heartfelt: it's impossible not to be won over by the melodic pop-rock beauty of "They Don't Know", her first single, by the fresh cheer of "Terry" and "A New England", which have the strength of real anthems or the amusing rockabilly of "There's A Guy Works Down At The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis". Then the cheerful and lively pop-rock girl evolves, grows, becomes a mature woman, open to new horizons: "Fairytale Of New York" is now history, indeed, legend, but that's not all: the enchanting and, in its own way, majestic excursion into country territories in "Don't Come The Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim" is a small arrangement masterpiece further ennobled by Kirsty's sweet voice, with a somewhat raw and irreverent undertone, who does not forget dear old pop-rock, reprising it in more mature forms with the sharp "Innocence" and with "Free World", she proves capable of writing acoustic ballads of great charm like "Still Life", the romantic "As Long As You Hold Me" and an epic "Titanic Days", and finally ventures into urban, almost hip-hop sounds with "Walking Down Madison", always with great class, and with the lively "My Affair" she discovers for the first time the allure and warmth of Latin sounds.

From time to time, Kirsty MacColl also tries her hand as a performer, splendidly presenting songs like the Kinks' "Days", Lou Reed's "Perfect Day", and "Miss Otis Regrets", a Cole Porter classic masterfully reinterpreted with an Irish twist with the collaboration of the Pogues; only her very sensual "Libertango" is missing, in which she proves to have absolutely nothing to envy of the higher-ranked Grace Jones. This 2005 collection closes, as it couldn't otherwise, with two tracks from what was the premature epilogue of her wonderful career: "Tropical Brainstorm" from 2000, the album of the great return, the album that restored the artistic value to a genre devalued and humiliated like Latin pop: here Kirsty MacColl is a great Popstar, a mature woman who elegantly flaunts her sex appeal, with a pinch of salty defiance in the famous "In These Shoes?" and sets hearts ablaze with the pressing and hot pace of "England 2 Columbia 0", a true assertion of genuine and intact femininity, more sincere than ever since it's sung by Kirsty MacColl, who, due to a tragic and ironic fate, could enjoy very little of the great success of this her last and sudden artistic turn, but the memory of a blue-blood princess anything but haughty and glossy, of a great artist, of a great woman will remain forever, her sweet slightly chubby face with the upturned nose, her beautiful green eyes, her reddish hair. How much today's music misses someone like her...