There is a thin line between sincerity and the art of faking it perfectly. While most if not all songwriters have their own idiosyncratic conceits and lyrical party tricks, Kirsty MacColl remains that rare thing: a pop songwriter who refuses to conceal.
Described by U2's Bono as "Noelle Coward" (bang on the money, actually), MacColl has been, quite incredibly, on the fringes of crossover success for almost 20 years. Starting off in the punk rock group Addix, she has transcended trends and fashions through the years, a woman who remembers what colour dress she wore when she played Dublin's McGonagles in the late 1970s ("I had a red dress, hadn't I? It was very tight. I'm surprised you can't remember it. I was very thin then!") and who professes to intensely dislike the rigours of promoting herself as a viable music industry product, something she puts down to her general lack of commercial appeal.
"I'm committed to writing the songs, making the music and working with the musicians, but I find it quite hard to sell myself, which is quite a big part of the whole thing," she says over the line from a London rehearsal studio. "I don't mind working 24 hours a day on the music, but when it comes talking shite, basically, I find it quite difficult. It's hard talking to people who aren't interested in the music, and trying to be upbeat about it. I know it's part of the job, and I try to do my best, but it's just emotionally draining and exhausting. There are so many other things to do.
"Full marks to other pop stars who can do it. Bono is great at it - he's full-on all the time but he still has a life. It's a tough thing to balance.
"For people who make good records and are really good artists and sell themselves well, you can only admire them. That said, there are lots of people who sell themselves very well who don't make good records at all. If you've got to be on one side or the other, I'd rather be making good music."
Throughout her stop-start career, Kirsty has gained moderate hit singles success as well as writing songs for other people. Her male equivalent would be the creative love-child of Billy Bragg and Morrissey, the former for his inquisitive nature as to the vagaries of human relationships, the latter for his sense of humour and peculiarly intuitive view of Englishness.
Interestingly, MacColl has had two of her biggest hits with songs written by Bragg and Morrissey, New England and You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby. What she adds to these parallel influences is a distinctly gender-based outlook, a sharp blend of cynicism, wit and melancholia.
Kirsty, however, is tiring of the morose, cold English weather atmospherics of her material. While it's impossible to completely remove the inherent sense of misery from her internal chemistry, her new album at least addresses similar issues in a fun way. Now parted from her husband, acclaimed record producer Steve Lilywhite, MacColl has embraced a long-time musical love of hers, Latino, and written a suite of songs that sway as much as provoke. Visits to Cuba and Brazil over the past seven years only added to her enthusiasms for the people and the cultures, her travels acting as a balm to her marriage breakdown wounds as much as an incitement to enjoy herself.
"I got married and had kids when I was very young," she says with no trace of bitterness, "and I never had that thing of travelling around the world in my 20s. Then I had a period in my life where I could suddenly decide to do this or that particular thing. I'd always wanted to go to these places and learn about their culture."
IT'S hardly likely, but it's nonetheless possible that she could be accused of jumping on the current Latino bandwagon popularised by artists such as Geri Halliwell, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin. Naturally enough, she laughs at the absurdity of the suggestion.
"It's funny really," she reasons. "I've been working on this album for the past three and a half years and all of a sudden so much Latin music has come into the charts. But that was bound to happen, because on this side of the water Britain was one of the last places to catch on to it. Brazilian music has been huge in France since the 1960s - look at any French film of that time and you'll hear a great Brazilian soundtrack on it. Anyway, if people want to think I'm jumping on Geri's bandwagon, then let them fire ahead. If they're that daft to think I'd do it, I couldn't really be bothered to argue."
What of her melancholic bent? While she's not exactly pop music's answer to Sylvia Plath, she nevertheless knows how to express emotional disappointment. If it's logical to genetically link such a demeanour to her father (Ewan MacColl, writer of that poem to love, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face), it's also a bit too pat.
"I'm happy now," Kirsty admits, simply. "I didn't start writing the new album until I'd changed. I wanted to write something that wasn't melancholy. I don't want to write sad music all the time. I feel very happy at the moment. It's not that my marriage was like that. I was always melancholy as a teenager, just a little bit sad, and prone to a lot of depression. It takes years and years to work it out.
"I've tried my best to sort it out and it seems to have worked. It would take too long to explain exactly how, and I'm not into the singer/songwriter thing of songs as therapy. It's shrink-wrap music that I find incredibly dull and self-indulgent. I didn't want to get into that.
"I wanted to make a record that people could dance to, and that, if they didn't feel like dancing, they could sit down and listen to the lyrics and have a laugh."
Kirsty MacColl is a guest artist at the Heineken Hot Press Music Awards at Dublin's HQ on Thursday. She and her band also plays HQ on Friday. Her new album, Tropical Brainstorm, will be released early next year