It featured on ‘Hits Album 2’ (1985), and on ‘Now That’s What I Call Music 1985’ (Queen, Kate Bush, Go West, Feargal Sharkey). ‘Sound of the Suburbs’ (Crimson 1998 with Lou Reed, XTC, The Jam, Bow Wow Wow). The track also appears on the compilation album ‘Diving for Pearls’ which also features Paul Quinn, Stone Roses, Mari Wilson, Sugarcubes& Department S. ‘A New England’ appeared on a Rhino Records 1992 compilation called ‘Stiff Box’ which fills up 4 discs with the best of the Stiff recordings (including Tracey Ullman’s ‘You broke my heart in 17 Places’), ‘A Hard Night’s Day’ (A History of Stiff Records) and also ‘Stiff, Stiffer, Stiffest: A Stiff Records Collection’ and most recently ‘Born Stiff’, a Salvo release. When Kirsty MacColl recorded ‘A New England’ in 1985 and took it into the Top Ten, the paradox of the chorus was rinsed out by a pop arrangement and a sweet voice, but the way Billy plays it, with the lone Duane Eddy guitar and that plaintive quality to the vocal, says it all.
Here is a poet trapped in a modern world, so besotted with a girl he does not yet know, he is prepared to cast all broader ideals aside in favour of domestic utopia. “Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?” he asks. Billy is desperate for some romantic inspiration, but the two shooting stars in his song turn out to be satellites. More thoughts originally published in the 1998 book ‘Still Suitable for Miners (the Official Biography)’ by Andrew Collins (Virgin Books ISBN 0-7535-0232-1: “written after seeing two satellites flying alongside each other in the clear Northants sky, the central conceit of the song lies in the claim that the singer doesn’t want to change the world, merely get a shag. That song, I didn’t really think that anybody would ever hear it. Instead they sing, "And when the bastard didn’t ring, I knew it wasn’t you," which is a better line! I don’t know if they misheard it or did it on purpose, but I prefer that, actually.
On the BBC session from 1991 with Billy Bragg she clearly sings ‘dreams’.īilly said in an interview with ‘The Big Takeover’, “There’s a new cover of ‘New England’ by a band of which I can’t remember the name, and it’s the KIRSTY version – I don’t know if they’ve ever heard my version! But they do the same arrangement as the Kirsty cover, they do the three verses, and instead of doing, ‘Last night beside the telephone, I waited for someone to pull me through, And when at last it didn’t ring I knew it wasn’t you," which is the last verse of the Kirsty version. Note that on the original version, and on the BBC session from 1995, Kirsty appears to sing ‘jeans’, and this was published in Smash Hits as the correct lyric. *4 Note: This section was not in Billy’s original song – those verses were written specially at Kirsty’s request since she thought the song was too short as it stood to release as a single. *3 originally, "I’m just looking for another girl" *2 originally, "they put you on the pill" *1 originally, "when will you grow up to be a man, But the girls I knew at school…" When at last it didn’t ring I knew it wasn’t you I wished on them but they were only satellites Though I put you on a pedestal you put me on the pill *2 Why the girls I knew at school are already pushing prams People ask me when will I grow up to understand *1