Kirsty MacColl: The One and Only: The Authorised Biography [Hardcover]

'This book is a thoroughly good read that urges you to re-investigate the woman's causes, as well as her music.'

'O'Brien's book is a sensitive and sometimes poignant biography'

Everything about Kirsty MacColl defied the conventional 'pop' category, yet she embraced and defended the genre, redeeming it with literate writing that had seldom been seen in British pop since the glory days of Ray Davies and the Kinks. Her music was funny, irreverent and endearingly catchy and her five albums in almost twenty years became symbolic rescue missions to retrieve British pop music from all that was saccharine and shallow, manufactured and mainstream. Overcoming agonising stage fright, long periods of writer's block and depression, she created a hugely successful solo career and collaborated with a legion of people from the Rolling Stones to the Happy Mondays. Her tragic death in a senseless boating accident came shortly after the release of her long-awaited album Tropical Brainstorm, an Anglo-Latin pop hybrid that embraced her passion for Cuba. The One and Only is the definitive Kirsty MacColl biography and a tribute to a highly original talent. It will include photographs, a full discography and performance list.

Karen O'Brien is a news editor for the BBC World Service in London. As a news journalist, she has worked in print, radio and television, including the BBC and Reuters. She has written and broadcast widely on the arts, with a particular passion for music. Her previous books include Joni Mitchell: Shadows and Light (Virgin, 2001) and Hymn to Her (Virago, 1995), a collection of writings on women musicians, incl Kirsty MacColl. This is her fourth book. She is a New Zealander by birth and Londoner by choice.