Tracey Ullman – They Don’t Know

“They Don’t Know” – Single by Tracey Ullman from the album You Broke My Heart in 17 Places
B-side: “The B-Side” (UK) / “You Broke My Heart in 17 Places” (US)
Released: September 1983
Label: MCAStiff
Songwriter: Kirsty MacColl
Producer: Peter Collins
Charted No.8 in US and No.2 in UK

This song was written and first recorded by Kirsty MacColl in 1979. However, a strike at her distributors prevented it from being released as a single, although it was popular on UK radio. Tracey’s version, however, was a hit, and Kirsty MacColl provided backing vocals on this version: the ‘bay-ay-be-ee’ heard just before the last verse, is sung by her.

The song is about a girl who hears from lots of people that the guy she’s seeing isn’t right for her. She feels that they just don’t understand, as they’ve never heard of love.

Kirsty MacColl wrote this when she was just 17. She was the daughter of folk singer/songwriter Ewan MacColl, who wrote Roberta Flack’s “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” In December 2000, she tragically died after being hit by a speedboat in the Caribbean. After her death, Tracey Ullman took part in a tribute concert for her.

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.

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.

Music video by Tracey Ullman performing They Don’t Know. © 1979 Universal Music Operations Limited