Music Career
In 1983, Ullman succeeded as a singer on the punk label Stiff Records, although her style was more comic romantic than punk. She had six songs in the UK Top 100 in less than two years. Her 1983 debut album, You Broke My Heart in 17 Places, featured her first hit single, "Breakaway" (famous for her performance with a hairbrush as a microphone); the international hit cover version of label-mate Kirsty MacColl's "They Don't Know" went to No.2 in the UK, and No.8 in the U.S. MacColl sang backing vocals on Ullman's version. It would later become the theme song to Ullman's later television series, Tracey Takes On....
Follow-up singles, a cover of Doris Day's "Move Over Darling", which reached No.8 in the UK, and the cover of Madness' "My Girl", which Ullman changed to "My Guy's Mad at Me", were released. (The "My Guy" video featured the British Labour Party politician Neil Kinnock, at the time the Leader of the Opposition)
Ullman's songs were over-the-top evocations of 1960s and 1970s pop music with a 1980s edge, "somewhere between Minnie Mouse and the Supremes" as the Melody Maker put it, or "retro before retro was cool", as a retrospective reviewer wrote in 2002. Her career received another boost when the video for "They Don't Know" featured a cameo from Paul McCartney; at the time Ullman was filming a minor role in McCartney's film Give My Regards to Broad Street. Ullman released her second and last album, You Caught Me Out, in 1984.
Her final hit, "Sunglasses" (1984), featured comedian Adrian Edmondson in its music video. During this time, she also appeared as a guest VJ on MTV in the United States.
In her HBO stand-up special, Tracey Ullman: Live and Exposed, Ullman recreated her music career, recounting how she entered the business, and why she left it. Performances of many of her hit singles were also performed in front of an audience for the performance. In October 2006, Ullman took part in the BBC Four documentary series, If It Ain't Stiff, a mini-series dedicated to the history of the label. A new "remastered" version of ...17 Places was released in 2007.
Read more about this topic: Tracey Ullman
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