MacColl was the daughter of dancer Jean Newlove and noted folk singer Ewan MacColl. She grew up in Croydon. Her initial career followed a substantially different path than that of her father; she first came to notice when Chiswick Records released an EP by local punk rock band the Drug Addix with MacColl on backing vocals under the pseudonym Mandy Doubt. Stiff Records executives were not impressed with the band, but liked her and subsequently signed her to a solo deal. Her debut solo single "They Don't Know", released in 1979, was a huge airplay hit in the UK, but never reached the shops due to a distributors' strike. After another single, "You Caught Me Out", failed to chart, MacColl felt she lacked Stiff's full backing and moved to Polydor Records in 1981. She had a UK Top 20 hit with the witty yet meaningful "There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis," taken from her critically acclaimed debut album Desperate Character. The Kite (LP) in 1989 was widely praised by critics. MacColl's lyrics addressed life in Margaret Thatcher's England on "Free World", ridiculed the vapidity of fame in "Fifteen Minutes", and addressed the vagaries of love in "Don't Come The Cowboy With Me, Sonny Jim!" Although Kite contained many original compositions of great quality, MacColl's biggest success from the album would be the cover of The Kinks' song "Days", which gave her a UK Top 20 hit. Despite being an acclaimed songwriter in her own right, MacColl's success with these songs, as well as her version of "A New England", garnered her a reputation as being a "cover queen". Several trips to Cuba & Brazil restored MacColl's creative muse, and the world music-inspired (particularly Cuban and other Latin American forms) Tropical Brainstorm, often described as her finest work, was released in 2000. "Brainstorm" melded the Latinate music with her droll British lyrics to great effect. It included the song "In These Shoes", which garnered airplay in the U.S. and was covered by Bette Midler, featured in the HBO show Sex and the City and adopted by Catherine Tate as the theme tune for her BBC TV show. On December 18, 2000, she and her sons went diving in Cozumel, in a specific diving area that watercraft were restricted from entering. With the group was a local veteran divemaster, Ivan Diaz. As the group was surfacing from a dive, a speeding powerboat entered the restricted area. MacColl saw the boat coming for her sons. Louis was not in the boat's path, but Jamie was. She was able to push him out of the way (he sustained minor head and rib injuries) but in doing so, the boat hit her and she was killed instantly.