My Music Monday

It's a two-fer today.  I thought of breaking it up over the next two weeks, but why bother?

These selections stem from a dream I had last week.  In said dream, I was explaining to Rebecca's sister-in-law the difference and connection between Kirsty MacColl and Tracey Ullman.

Clearly, they are not the same person, though Ullman's one "hit" record, "They Don't Know" was written by MacColl.

I put hit in quotes thinking she never had an actual success with her song, only to find out it actually did make it to #8 on the US Hot 100.  Who knew?  I only saw it on VH1, though I owned her album, You Broke My Heart in 17 Places.  It's fun, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it is good disk.

Oh, and to add another layer to the music / dream, in it, the song playing was actually MacColl singing a cover of the Smiths' "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby".

MacColl was a great writer and a fun recording artist - and totally under appreciated.  I say 'was', because she had a most untimely and tragic death years back.  Yet, I own and routinely play, all her albums - though her debut, Kite, is still my favourite.

Ullman's cover of "You Don't Know" becomes more of a visual representation because that is Ullman's primary medium, but in a way you get some of MacColl's whimsy.



Paul McCartney did Ullman a favour by appearing in the video, since Ullman had just "starred" in his film Give My Regards to Broadstreet.  (Yeah, no one else saw it either, so don't scratch your head over this one.)

MacColl is more of an aural artist and really doesn't have that many "official" videos. She got by on her songwriting and singing and her first four albums or so were produced by her then husband, Steve Lillywhite (U2, Talking Heads, etc).

I kept going over which song to use, but I went with "In These Shoes", from her last album, Tropical Brainstorm.

The song has a Latin influence, which many of her songs from her second album on, would tend to have. It's one of my favourite songs, but there is not true corresponding video that isn't a poorly made fan one, or a less than standard live performance.  ...and Soundcloud wouldn't let me embed it here due to some kind of copywrite infringement.