"Twinkling" Mary Kelly

Genre: ghastly folk

Era: 2003

Country of Origin: UK

A gauche and guileless 16 year old when she plopped into the consciousness of a public desperate to be entertained by a musical act virtually identical to Charlotte Church, but without the singing, Mary Kelly was instantly clasped to the breast of The Brighton Demographic.

With her naïve ways and trademark moon-faced Cornishness, she found sudden and undeservedly huge success the moment her hideous pre-release debut single was play-listed for incessant rotation on both BBC Radio and UK MTv channels.

This was a first for both outlets, as Mary Kelly’s chosen oeuvre was the flinchingly narrow folk harp pop – named imaginatively due to its reliance on folk harp instrumentalism and electro-breakbeats.

This single, Magical Steeples, achieved commercial but little critical success, entering the UK top forty at number forty, and remaining concretely in situ for a total of 7 whole days – weathering gales of tabloid scrutiny and the fawning adoration of biscuit-addled pensioners and homosexual clubbers.

In fact it is almost solely due to the power of both pink and blue-rinsed pounds that Magical Steeples achieved the tedious success that it did, and why Kelly’s publishers, Dad’s Farm Music, considered the release of a follow up album to capitalise on the public’s seeming ability to buy just about anything.

Proposed further recordings were sadly scuppered however, when Kelly became hopelessly smitten with Gargill Haversam, a surly boy of fifteen local to her small village. She assumed his circle of interest, and those song manuscripts published of the never-to-be-recorded album indicate a proposed change of direction, to incorporate vocals and a conceptual lyrical theme dedicated to Warhammer 40K.

In the last of her promotional photographs, published before her retirement from music with a stated interest to “drink more cider lol”, Kelly appears in striped tights and a motorcycle-style leatherette jacket, looking off-camera towards where, reportedly, Haversam was making “fanny-licking faces”.

Subsequently, Kelly has failed to trouble the media. Her “twinkling” seemingly dulled for good.

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