| "They Don't Know" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by Kirsty MacColl | ||||
| B-side | "Motor On" | |||
| Released | 2 June 1979 | |||
| Recorded | 1979 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Label | Stiff Records | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Kirsty MacColl | |||
| Producer(s) | Liam Sternberg | |||
| Kirsty MacColl singles chronology | ||||
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"They Don't Know" is a song composed and first recorded in 1979 by Kirsty MacColl. Though unsuccessful, the song was later recorded by Tracey Ullman in 1983. Ullman's version reached No. 2 in the UK and No. 8 in the US.
When I was with the R&B outfit Drug Addix, Stiff Records paid for some demos to be done with the band, but they didn't really like them. When they heard that I'd eventually left [Drug Addix] they called me & said: "We'd like you to come & play us anything you’ve got." I said: "I thought you didn't like the demos", and they said: "We hate the band, but we quite like you". When they asked if I had any songs, I said: "Oh yeah, loads!", even though I didn't at all. Then I thought: "Oh God, I'd better write something before I go in to see them." And that's when I wrote "They Don't Know". I went round with a cassette, singing to an acoustic guitar. They liked it and signed me.
—Kirsty MacColl on the genesis of "They Don't Know" [1]
Recorded in Stiff Records' mobile studio, The China Shop, in the spring of 1979, Kirsty MacColl's original recording of "They Don't Know" "emphasized layered harmonies in which MacColl turns her own voice into a chorus of over-dubbed parts" [2] - an evocation of a long-standing admiration for the Beach Boys engendered at age 7 by hearing her brother's copy of the "Good Vibrations" single:
I played it so much he just said: "have it"...I played it incessantly for about twelve hours a day, working out all the different parts and harmonies. [3]
Besides the regular vinyl single release of 1 June 1979 a picture disc edition was issued 6 July 1979. The B-side to "They Don't Know" was MacColl's recording of her composition "Turn My Motor On" - some copies read "Motor On" - , a setlist staple of Drug Addix, the band MacColl had recently left (consideration had been given to making "Turn My Motor On" the A-side). [1] MacColl's "They Don't Know" reached number two on the Music Week airplay chart [4] without generating sufficient sales to reach the UK Singles Chart - a shortfall blamed on a strike at the distributors for Stiff Records keeping the single out of stores, although its producer Liam Sternberg attributes the failure of "They Don't Know" to ill feeling which developed between MacColl and Stiff Records president Dave Robinson:
Kirsty and Dave didn’t get along...She didn’t want to sign a longer deal, so Dave didn’t promote the record. [Despite] airplay...they didn’t press any more [so] no records [were] sold because there were no records out there. [1]
Promo copies of a followup single: "You Caught Me Out", were pressed in October 1979 but Stiff opted to shelve the single, with MacColl's first release subsequent to "They Don't Know" being her remake of "Keep Your Hands Off My Baby" released in 1981 on Polydor.
MacColl's version of "They Don't Know" would not make its album debut until 1995 on the singer's retrospective album Galore . [5]
| "They Don't Know" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by Tracey Ullman | ||||
| from the album You Broke My Heart in 17 Places | ||||
| B-side |
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| Released | 16 September 1983 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 3:00 | |||
| Label | ||||
| Songwriter(s) | Kirsty MacColl | |||
| Producer(s) | Peter Collins | |||
| Tracey Ullman singles chronology | ||||
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| Audio sample | ||||
"They Don't Know" | ||||
I wish I'd got to #1—but "Karma Chameleon" hung on... When Kid Jensen announced I still hadn't made #1, I was really pissed off. I mean, I wore that pink lurex miniskirt for weeks, with all the dry ice on flipping Top of the Pops, & I still didn't make it. It still hurts.
—Tracey Ullman in 2016 on the number-two UK chart peak of "They Don't Know" [8]
In October 1983, Tracey Ullman reached number two on the UK Singles Chart with her recording of "They Don't Know" for Stiff Records; the track was included on Ullman's debut album You Broke My Heart in 17 Places . "They Don't Know" was ranked at number 23 on the year-end tally of UK chart singles and afforded Ullman a number-one hit in Ireland for two weeks, and it spent nine weeks at number one in Norway.
Well known in the UK as an actress/comedienne, Ullman had had a top-10 hit with her debut single "Breakaway". Pete Waterman, whose Loose End Productions had recently provided Stiff hit singles with the Belle Stars, suggested to his friend Kirsty MacColl that she pitch her composition "They Don't Know" for Ullman to record as her second single. [9]
The production of Ullman's "They Don't Know" was credited to Peter Collins, Waterman's Loose Ends partner. Waterman honed the track, including having MacColl and Rosemary Robinson (the wife of Stiff Records president Dave Robinson) "add Shangri-La-type backing vocals", in Waterman's words, and having MacColl reprise her original "bay-ay-be-ee” to intro the third verse (as Ullman had a limited high-end range). [10]
MTV cofounder Robert Pittman saw the video made to promote Ullman's "They Don't Know", and despite Ullman having nil exposure in the U.S., Pittman invited her to be a guest MTV VJ for the week of February 13–18, 1984. The resultant positive response caused MCA Records to rush-release "They Don't Know" as Ullman's debut US single, [11] which eventually reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 11 on the Adult Contemporary.
"They Don't Know" was Ullman's only Top 40 hit in the U.S. Although she had three more entries in the UK Top 30 - including the top-10 hit "Move Over Darling" - Ullman, when asked in a 2017 The Guardian interview "If you could edit your past, what would you change?", said: "I would have stopped making records after 'They Don’t Know'." [12]
In 1997, "They Don't Know" became the theme song for the final three seasons of Ullman's HBO television series Tracey Takes On.... The Ullman version was used as the theme for the opening credits of Our Nixon , a 2013 documentary about U.S. President Richard Nixon. [13]
Ullman sang the song in 2002 at a memorial tribute concert for MacColl, who was killed in a boating accident in December 2000. It was her first public singing performance in nearly 20 years. [14]
In September 2021, Tracey Ullman confirmed on the BBC's Desert Island Discs radio program that her version of "They Don't Know" contains the high note on the word "Baby" from Kirsty MacColl's original version. Ullman also did not use a previously existing MacColl backing track when recording her own version of MacColl's "Terry" in 1984. (Both versions of "Terry" were co-produced by MacColl.)
Comparing the two versions, Ken Tucker of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote "Ullman's rendition...makes [the song] palatable to American audiences by [replacing] McColl's fervent intensity with a bouncy cheerfulness & layers of...synthesizers...It's a cheerful throwback to the innocent hits of 1960s girl-group rock". [15]
A video was filmed to promote Ullman's version of "They Don't Know" in which Paul McCartney made a cameo (McCartney had just completed filming Give My Regards to Broad Street in which Ullman had a cameo). Directed by Stiff Records president Dave Robinson, the video for "They Don't Know" had a storyline devised by Ullman herself in which she played a young woman in a blossoming romantic relationship with her working class, ne'er do well boyfriend in the 1960s. The video concludes with Ullman portraying the song's protagonist as a dowdy council estate type mother (not unlike her character Betty Tomlinson from the comedy sketch show Three of a Kind ), unkempt, heavily pregnant and shopping for groceries in her slippers, her life of domestic drudgery sustained only by her fantasy of being in a relationship with her idol Paul McCartney. [11]
The comical video was voted the second best video of 1983 by readers of Smash Hits magazine (beaten only by Duran Duran's "Union of the Snake" video), Ullman was voted Best Female Singer, and the song was voted fourth Best Single of 1983.
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
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| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom (BPI) [33] | Silver | 250,000^ |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. | ||
 | This section needs additional citations for verification .(January 2018) |
Tracey Ullman is a British-American actress, comedian, singer, writer, producer, and director. Her earliest mainstream appearances were on British television sketch comedy shows A Kick Up the Eighties and Three of a Kind. After a brief singing career, she appeared as Candice Valentine in Girls on Top with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.
"Fairytale of New York" is a song written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan and recorded by their London-based band the Pogues, featuring singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl on vocals. The song is an Irish folk-style ballad and was written as a duet, with the Pogues' singer MacGowan taking the role of the male character and MacColl playing the female character. It was originally released as a single on 23 November 1987 and later featured on the Pogues' 1988 album If I Should Fall from Grace with God.
Tropical Brainstorm is the fifth and final studio album by Kirsty MacColl, released in 2000. It was inspired by her trips to Cuba, and many tracks include Spanish or Portuguese lyrics. The album was released with three extra tracks in the US.
"Days" is a song by the Kinks, written by lead singer Ray Davies, released as a single in 1968. It also appeared on an early version of the album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. It now appears as a bonus track of the remastered CD. On the original Pye 7N 17573 label, the name of the song is "Day's" due to a grammatical error.
"A New England" is a song written and recorded by Billy Bragg, included on his album Life's a Riot with Spy Vs Spy, released in 1983. It remains a signature song from the early years of Bragg's recording career.
"There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis" is a song by British singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl, which was released as the lead single from her debut studio album Desperate Character. The song was written by MacColl and Philip Rambow, and produced by Barry Farmer. It reached No. 14 in the UK Singles Chart and remained in the charts for nine weeks. In the US, the song's British chip shop reference was changed to truck stop.
"Terry" is a song by Kirsty MacColl, released as a single in October 1983, and charting at No. 82 in the UK the following month. It was her first release after returning to Stiff Records, and was the last in a run of poorly selling singles released between "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis" and "A New England". The music video featured an appearance from actor and comedian Ade Edmondson, who played MacColl's rejected boyfriend who got her back after fighting off a rival man. The photo on the front sleeve features MacColl and Chris Heester.
"Don't Come the Cowboy with Me Sonny Jim!" is a song by British singer and songwriter Kirsty MacColl, which was released in 1990 as the fourth and final single from her second studio album Kite. It was written by MacColl and produced by Steve Lillywhite. The song reached No. 82 in the UK and remained in the charts for four weeks. A music video was filmed to promote the single, directed by Sarah Tuft.
You Broke My Heart in 17 Places is the debut studio album by Tracey Ullman, released in 1983. It peaked at No. 14 on the UK Albums chart and No. 34 in the spring of 1984 on the Billboard 200 in the United States.
You Caught Me Out is the second and final studio album by Tracey Ullman. It was released on Stiff Records in November 1984 throughout Europe. Unlike her 1983 debut album, this album was never released commercially in the United States.
Kirsty Anna MacColl was a British singer and songwriter, daughter of folk singer Ewan MacColl. She recorded several pop hits in the 1980s and 1990s, including "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis" and cover versions of Billy Bragg's "A New England" and the Kinks's "Days". Her first single, "They Don't Know", had chart success a few years later when covered by Tracey Ullman. MacColl also sang on a number of recordings produced by her then-husband Steve Lillywhite, most notably "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues. Her death in 2000 led to the Justice for Kirsty campaign.
"Walking Down Madison" is a 1991 song by Kirsty MacColl featuring Aniff Cousins. It charted at No. 23 on the UK Singles Chart and impacted a number of Billboard charts.
The British independent record label Stiff Records has released 259 singles and 65 albums on general release in the United Kingdom with a prefix catalogue number of BUY and SEEZ respectively. Just under a quarter of all BUY singles releases charted in the UK Singles Chart and 22 of these have gone on to receive either a silver or gold disc from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Over one third of all SEEZ albums releases charted in the UK Albums Chart and 13 of these have gone on to receive either a silver, gold or platinum disc from the BPI. This list excludes non-BUY singles catalogue numbers such as DAMNED 1, DEV 1 and NY 7. It also excludes non-SEEZ album catalogue numbers such as FIST 1, GET 1, and LENE 1.
"Free World" is a song by British singer and songwriter Kirsty MacColl, which was released in 1989 as the lead single from her second studio album Kite. It was written by MacColl and produced by Steve Lillywhite. "Free World" reached number 43 in the UK Singles Chart and remained in the top 100 for seven weeks.
"Caroline" is a song by British singer and songwriter Kirsty MacColl, released in February 1995 as a single from her compilation album Galore. The song was written by MacColl, and produced by Victor Van Vugt and MacColl. "Caroline" reached number 58 in the UK Singles Chart and remained in the top 100 for two weeks.
"He's on the Beach" is a song by British singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl, which was released in 1985 as a non-album single by Stiff Records. It was written by MacColl and Gavin Povey, and produced by Steve Lillywhite.
This is the discography of former British-American pop singer Tracey Ullman. Known mainly for her work in television and film, she had a brief career as a successful pop singer. She was signed to Stiff Records in 1983 after label owner Dave Robinson heard some of the song parodies she did in her early television work. Her albums consisted mainly of cover versions of songs from the 1950s through the early 1980s.
"You Caught Me Out" is a song written by Kirsty MacColl, Pete Briquette and Simon Crowe. It was originally recorded by MacColl in 1979, with Liam Sternberg as the producer, but the intended single release later that year was shelved. In 2023, it was issued as a limited edition 7-inch single. Versions have also been recorded by Australian singer Christie Allen and British-American singer/actress Tracey Ullman.
"I Want Out" is a song by English rockabilly band Matchbox featuring Kirsty MacColl. It was released in 1983 as the third and final single from the band's sixth studio album Crossed Line (1982). It was written by Brian Hodgson, Ray Peters and Tony Colton, and produced by Hodgson.
David Robinson, nicknamed Robbo, is an Irish music executive, music video director, record producer, music manager, and photographer. He is best known as the co-founder with Jake Riviera of Stiff Records where he signed up The Damned, Tracey Ullman, Kirsty MacColl, The Pogues, and Madness. He had also managed Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds and Ian Dury before signing them up to Stiff.
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