Galore - The Best Of Kirsty Maccoll - Kirsty MacColl

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas for me without hearing the raucous ‘Christmas in New York’ played in all the department stores during the ritual shopping trips. It’s a lovely romantic booze-soaked song, one of the best ever, a Christmas classic since December 1987, with Kirsty MacColl’s sweetly ironic voice balanced against the gruff romanticism of Shane McGowan. As I write this now I can visualize the video and hear the poignancy in her voice when she sings “So could anyone” to Shane’s taunt that he “could have been someone”. A simple lyric, but one which encapsulated the whole story of this great ...  Read the complete review

It made me genuinely sad last year when I heard that Kirsty MacColl had died in a tragic water incident in Mexico. I loved and still love all of Kirsty’s work and to say that she was a magical entertainer would be a ridiculous and unimportant understatement about life. Galore really is the ‘best’ of MacColl’s back catalogue and is an album that I like to play more than regularly. When I heard of her death I didn’t want to play it anymore because the joviality and pure glee that you instantly get in ‘galore-like’ quantities from all these tunes would not have seemed right somehow. After a couple of months ...  Read the complete review

The cheeky picture of Kirsty on the inside cover with the Cuban cigar and hat showed her growing interest with South American music and politics. I first got into her work when I was working in a factory environment, with the radio blaring out all day. The track 'Caroline' was the single, which struck a chord with me at the time. This coincided with the release of the album Galore, which I had to go and purchase. I then discovered the diversity of her work, which resulted in the purchase of all her previous albums. The lyrics of the songs are an absolute joy - the ability to identify with the listener that a lot of the pop bands seem to miss. ...  Read the complete review