Nellie McKay - 5 Albums (2004-2010) (Repost)

Nell Marie McKay (born April 13, 1982) is a British-American singer-songwriter, actress, and former stand-up comedian, noted for her critically acclaimed albums, and for her Broadway debut in The Threepenny Opera (2006). Her music has showcased different genres, from jazz to rap and disco to funk.

McKay was born in London to an English father, writer-director Malcolm McKay, and an American mother, actress Robin Pappas. She holds dual citizenship. While growing up, she lived with her mother in Harlem, New York, in Olympia, Washington and in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania. She studied jazz voice at the Manhattan School of Music, but did not graduate. Her performances at various New York City music venues, including the Sidewalk Cafe and Joe's Pub, drew attention from record labels. She signed with Columbia Records.

Sister Orchid is Nellie’s seventh album, starting with Get Away From Me (“a tour de force” – The New York Times), including Normal As Blueberry Pie: A Tribute to Doris Day (“among the killer overhauls of American standards” – The New York Times) and My Weekly Reader, music of the ‘60s (“..kicks serious butt. The results are beautiful.” – PopMatters), her second collaboration with famed Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick. On Obligatory Villagers (“a brisk nine-song set that plays like the breathless first act of a stage musical decrying American fascism” – SPIN), local Poconos hometown jazz greats Bob Dorough, Phil Woods, and David Liebman contributed their exceptional talents.

She has won a Theatre World Award for her portrayal of Polly Peachum on Broadway in The Threepenny Opera, performed onscreen in the films PS I Love You and Downtown Express, and her music was used in Rumor Has It, Monster-in-Law, PS I Love You, Gasland, Last Holiday and Private Life.

McKay co-created and starred in the award-winning off-Broadway hit Old Hats and has written three acclaimed musical biographies – I Want to Live!, the story of Barbara Graham, third woman executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin, Silent Spring: It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature, an exploration of environmental pioneer Rachel Carson, and A GIRL NAMED BILL – The Life and Times of Billy Tipton, named one of the Best Concerts of 2014 by The New York Times. Her latest lady bio is The Big Molinsky – Considering Joan Rivers (“unpredictable, thrilling…sardonic wit..” – The New York Times).

Nellie’s music has been heard on Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Weeds, Grey’s Anatomy, NCIS, Nurse Jackie, and SMILF, and she has appeared on TV shows including The Late Show with David Letterman, Conan, Ferguson, and The View. Nellie has made numerous radio appearances on NPR’s Mountain Stage, A Prairie Home Companion, eTown, and Marion McPartland’s Piano Jazz. The Chase Brock Experience produced a ballet of her third album, Obligatory Villagers, and she contributed the forward to the 20th anniversary edition of The Sexual Politics of Meat. Her writing has also appeared in The Onion, Interview and The New York Times Book Review.

A recipient of PETA’s Humanitarian Award and the Humane Society’s Doris Day Music Award in recognition of her dedication to animal rights, Nellie is an annoyingly vocal advocate for feminism, civil rights and other deeply felt progressive ideals. She is currently part of the campaign to get horse-drawn carriages off the streets of New York City. She would like to be friends with Russia, the country with the most nuclear weapons in the world. We must all be very kind to one another.

“Thanks to (McKay), the Great American Songbook has a living, breathing present as well as a glorious past” – Boston Globe

“McKay comes on as a Harlem Holly Golightly, a social activist with a disarming mastery of pop vernacular.” – Los Angeles Times

“…a sly, articulate musician who sounds comfortable in any era” – The New York Times

“..ambitious, intriguing and clever..” – Billboard

“McKay must have been genetically engineered under an oyster shell in New Orleans’ Frenchman St.. a bizarre sense of busker authenticity…witty, bright, and gloriously inappropriate.” – Theater Mania

“..funny and touching, ceaselessly clever and scarily talented.” – The New Yorker

“A renegade songwriter with an ultraflexible Great American Songbook sensibility, McKay finds modern resonances everywhere…” – Rolling Stone

“Her last two ‘cabaret’ shows I saw have been jaw-dropping. They both completely subverted the genre,” said David Byrne, … Among Ms. McKay’s charms, Mr. Byrne said, are the ways she playfully mixes what he called a “tragic noir vibe” with her “wicked sense of humor.” – The Wall Street Journal

“The one thing certain about Ms. McKay is the size and range of her talent..” – The New York Times



A striking mix of radical and traditional, raw emotion and literate expression, hip-hop and vocal pop, Nellie McKay's Get Away from Me is the kind of feverishly inventive, sprawling album that only comes from young artists. Though it could've easily fit onto a single CD, it's a double-disc set designed to reclaim the feeling of flipping over a record; the back cover proclaims that McKay "is a proud member of PETA." While McKay's age (21 at the time of the album's release) and sound make comparisons to Fiona Apple, Nelly Furtado, and Norah Jones easy – she even named her album Get Away from Me as a preemptive strike against it being lumped in with Jones' Come Away with Me – McKay is a more esoteric and hyperactively creative artist. She seems determined to prove how smart and wide-ranging she is on the album, and for the most part, she carries it off. Juxtaposing songs like the swoony torch song to New York, "Manhattan Avenue," and "Sari," a rap song about everything that gets on McKay's nerves (including McKay herself), certainly demonstrates the extremes of her music. However, these rapid-fire stylistic shifts and the sheer amount of information that McKay puts in her songs sometimes makes the album more dizzying than dazzling. But Get Away from Me succeeds, sometimes in spite of itself, as a musical document of all of the contradictions of a 19-year-old young woman with more than half a brain in her head. Some of McKay's songs deal with fairly typical themes like coming to terms with womanhood, sexuality, and relationships, but McKay attempts to cover as much lyrical ground as she does musical territory, with mixed results. On "Work Song," it sounds like McKay has heard how soul-sucking a nine-to-five can be, but it doesn't have the ring of truth that some of her other songs do. "Ding Dong," on the other hand, deals with depression in a surprisingly sprightly way, and the similarly witty "Clonie" turns human cloning into a story about self-obsession. The traditional feel of McKay's songwriting style and voice and her subversive lyrics often give Get Away from Me the feel of being the soundtrack to some long-lost feminist musical. "It's a Pose" and "Won't U Please B Nice" (sample lyric: "If we part I'll eat your heart") apply McKay's sharp wit to men and love; "I Wanna Get Married" casts a languidly scornful eye on traditional notions of marriage. These songs, along with the equally charming album opener, "David," and closer, "Really," have a lighter touch that avoids the clever-cleverness that drags down some of McKay's work, but is still miles away from the mild-mannered coffee-table jazz she loathes. Get Away from Me is an exciting debut that could become a cult favorite among pissed-off girl-women of McKay's age; if she can focus her creative energy without sacrificing any of the bite of her debut, she'll become an even more impressive talent. ~ AllMusic Review by Heather Phares

Disc 1
01. David (2:47)
02. Manhattan Avenue (3:39)
03. Sari (3:27)
04. Ding Dong (3:11)
05. Baby Watch Your Back (3:29)
06. The Dog Song (3:04)
07. Waiter (4:15)
08. I Wanna Get Married (4:02)
09. Change The World (3:58)

Disc 2
01. It's A Pose (3:31)
02. Toto Dies (4:03)
03. Won't U Please B Nice (2:10)
04. Inner Peace (2:53)
05. Suitcase Song (2:34)
06. Work Song (4:08)
07. Clonie (1:56)
08. Respectable (4:08)
09. Really (3:56)







Pretty Little Head, the Nellie McKay record that Columbia refused to release in early 2006, is remarkably similar to Get Away from Me, the record it released to wide acclaim in 2003. Like McKay's debut, it's a two-disc album packed with brash wordplay, passionate causes, and a diverting variety of New York music locales, from the Brill Building to Cafe Carlyle to the South Bronx. If it sacrifices some of the humor and precocious flair of her debut in favor of more social criticism, it's still a very entertaining and occasionally beautiful album that allows space for McKay's continuum of emotions, from gleeful to melancholy to furious. Beginning with a cheerleading tribute to gay marriage ("Cupcake"), she deftly interposes songs on activism, romance, and fun – not all of which are identifiable at first blush. A key part of her charm is that few of her activist songs are dour or academic (although a song about food, and titled "Food," is the most delightful song on the record). McKay, who sits in the production chair, sounds as musically astute as her predecessor Geoff Emerick (a large feat), and her band, resourceful and economical, again functions as an excellent vehicle for her eccentric songwriting. As on her debut, no songs are obvious highlights, although they're all good or great. In the bitter relationship song "There You Are in Me," McKay prefaces the title with "Everyone you meet secures a wretched seat within your memory/Wipe their filthy feet upon the yearning of your soul," but sings it with such energy and insistency that it doesn't sound maudlin or depressing. "The Big One" may make commercialism sound as terrifying as apocalypse, but "Columbia Is Bleeding" (about allegations of animal cruelty at Columbia University) is a quietly bewitching song quite apart from its subject matter. Although she may not strain for the humor of her first album, she summons a quiet beauty that's new for the elegy "Gladd" (which honors peace activist Gladd Patterson). Pretty Little Head sounds like a record from a woman coming out of girlhood – more confident, more wise about love, and more focused about her concerns, if no less passionate. ~ AllMusic Review by John Bush

Disc 1
01. Cupcake (4:44)
02. Pink Chandelier (1:39)
03. There You Are In Me (2:47)
04. Yodel (1:37)
05. The Big One (4:02)
06. G.E.S. (1:43)
07. I Will Be There (2:56)
08. The Down Low (3:36)
09. Long & Lazy River (3:47)
10. I Am Nothing (1:48)
11. Beecharmer (feat. Cyndi Lauper) (4:03)
12. Swept Away (1:53)

Disc 2
01. Real Life (2:50)
02. Tipperary (2:57)
03. Gladd (3:06)
04. Food (3:00)
05. We Had It Right (feat. K.D. Lang) (2:20)
06. Columbia Is Bleeding (3:41)
07. Lali Est Paresseux (2:33)
08. Happy Flower (2:28)
09. Mama & Me (4:12)
10. Pounce (0:56)
11. Old Enough (1:46)







The irony inherent in Obligatory Villagers, the shortest of Nellie McKay's first three albums, is that it's her most difficult to understand, comprehend, or even take in. This despite the fact that, unlike her first two albums, these nine songs don't sprawl stylistically. Except for a light pop opener – granted, that opener is a mocking satire of conservatives called "Mother of Pearl" with an opening line ("Feminists don't have a sense of humor") that deftly counterbalances McKay's later call for a dance break – the album is Broadway all the way. With McKay's voice and piano, plus heavyweight help from jazz horns including David Liebman, Phil Woods, and Bob Dorough (the latter a singing horn), the album charges by with lightning speed. Her nimble Broadway orchestrations step and kick so quickly that it's nearly impossible to decode McKay's lyrics until after several listens – even keeping up with the lyric book is difficult. (On his features, Dorough plays it up perfectly, a bemused and befuddled onlooker to the madness.) The fact that Obligatory Villagers does eventually coalesce into a unified and pleasurable listening experience is primarily a testament to Nellie McKay's sizable skills in arrangement and orchestration; writing original charts to provide the meat, then quoting from show tune tradition where she needs to lighten the mood, she makes the entire album a treat, an entertaining experience that listeners will want to sit through over and over until they figure out all of the points – large and small – she's making in these songs. If only there were a Broadway musical companion for Obligatory Villagers that listeners could actually sit through, either to visually unite the songs or merely to watch while they listened, Obligatory Villagers would be an amazing soundtrack. ~ AllMusic Review by John Bush

Track List:
01. Mother Of Pearl (2:10)
02. Oversure (3:20)
03. Gin Rummy (2:59)
04. Livin (0:24)
05. Identity Theft (3:28)
06. Galleon (3:22)
07. Politan (4:18)
08. Testify (5:41)
09. Zombie (5:56)






If vocal fans were forced to predict the honoree for a Nellie McKay tribute album, most would have gone far down the list before eventually happening upon the winner, Doris Day. (Granted, McKay had penned her praise of Day two years earlier in an article for the New York Times Review of Books.) But even though her lyrics and attitude are another story (or another era), McKay has a pure but nuanced voice that was always a good match for Day's, and her concern for animal rights is even closer (just check the liner notes for evidence). It's clear to see also that she truly honors her subject; she arranged and selected nearly all of the songs on the album, and even plays all the instruments on the opener, "The Very Thought of You" (that would be vocals, piano, organ, and bells). The selection choices shy away from Day's hits; only "Sentimental Journey" appears from a list of Doris Day's biggest, while "Secret Love," "Day by Day," "Come to Baby, Do," and "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)" are left behind. Many of the songs play up Doris Day the coquette, with "Do Do Do" and "Mean to Me" coming across just as sweet as the originals (actually, sweeter). The arrangements are strictly small-group, which is slightly surprising granted that the originals were either big-band swingers or highly orchestrated pop, but McKay shines here too, posing most of the charts halfway between cabaret and Broadway. Actually, when the professionals Bob Holderbaum and Bob Dorough reveal their orchestrations, the charts are a little too Broadway, a little too bland compared to McKay's – although "Wonderful Guy" is rescued by the most subtle vocal of McKay's career and wonderful accompaniment from Charles Pillow (channeling John Coltrane) on tenor sax. Fans of her subject may doubt her sincerity when, on "Crazy Rhythm," she revels in a series of corny asides – "Absolutely pip!" and "That's jazz!" – while Cenovia Cummins takes a hot violin solo. So, the question becomes: Does she revere all the lyrics she sings, as must any artist born past 1950? Of course not, but neither did Day herself. The long tradition of stagecraft (as well as songcraft) honors the fact that a performer can inhabit any character she wishes. The success of the project obviously hinges on McKay herself, and she brings it off thanks to one of the most affecting voices in modern music, a bewitching way of humanizing her songs, and her ability to echo Day's sincerity and joi de vivre (even if it is a performance). ~ AllMusic Review by John Bush

Track List:
01. The Very Thought Of You (2:10)
02. Do Do Do (3:14)
03. Wonderful Guy (3:11)
04. Meditation (4:01)
05. Mean To Me (2:42)
06. Crazy Rhythm (2:55)
07. Sentimental Journey (2:47)
08. If I Ever Had A Dream (3:48)
09. Black Hills Of Dakota (4:02)
10. Dig It (2:53)
11. Send Me No Flowers (3:22)
12. Close Your Eyes (4:23)
13. I Remember You (4:25)






Nellie McKay's first album of new material in three years returns her to the stylistically scattershot, lyrically ingenious nature of Obligatory Villagers. As she admits herself ("I have no idea how this album happened"), McKay is working on instinct, which helps preserve not only her many idiosyncrasies but also the charming and witty nature of her songwriting. She did gain guidance from two elder sources, one being her mother Robin Pappas (a co-producer) and the other David Byrne, who recruited McKay to appear on his Imelda Marcos concept album Here Lies Love and then returned the favor by making compilations and recommending people for Home Sweet Mobile Home. Byrne's help is intriguing, since the album has all the sounds of the post-millennial global village: reggae rhythms and vocal inflections for several tracks (including "Caribbean Time"), a New Yorker's version of Latin-ized tradition for "¡Bodega!," and, as before, plenty of the good-time, slightly New Orleans-influenced jazz she's floated in the past. The album also has slightly more guitar than any since her debut. Guitars were expected on her first record, since it was produced by Geoff Emerick, but here McKay and her group appear to be attempting an adult-alternative pop crossover of some type. Lyrically, she continues the incisive satire and parody heard on her earlier material. (The first line on Obligatory Villagers was "Feminists don't have a sense of humor," while Home Sweet Mobile Home begins with "The New York Times invents the news.") While her mood inevitably varies from track to track, McKay, more often than before, sounds as though circa-2000s malaise has infected her songwriting; the opener, "Bruise on the Sky," is especially dark (its chorus ends "What I hoped would be my rainbow, was just a bruise on the sky"). "Beneath the Underdog" and "No Equality" are equally dispirited, nearly fatalistic, despite the latter's airing as an organ-led soul jam. ~ AllMusic Review by John Bush

Track List:
01. Bruise On The Sky (4:31)
02. Adios (2:13)
03. Caribbean Time (4:19)
04. Please (3:10)
05. Beneath The Underdog (4:59)
06. Dispossessed (3:54)
07. The Portal (3:53)
08. Bodega! (3:39)
09. Coosada Blues (4:33)
10. No Equality (4:38)
11. Absolute Elsewhere (3:50)
12. Unknown Reggae (4:33)
13. Bluebird (3:11)




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