The 25 days of Christmas: Day 2
A brutal, sentimental masterpiece.
I’m sure everyone knows today’s song, but with the passing of Shane MacGowan two days ago it would be criminal not to share it. It’s the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York” from 1988:
Apparently the song is a firmly embedded holiday staple in the UK, but it’s far too bleak for the American mass audience. I didn’t hear it until I was in my 20s, when its grim poetry took my breath away. I don’t need to sit here and recap what’s great about it—there’s never been a Christmas song like it before, and there never will again. After hundreds of listens over the years it can still move me to tears.
A lot of rather disconnected notes about this one, as its tendrils spread far and wide:
This is one of those songs whose title isn’t in the lyrics. The title came from the novel A Fairy Tale of New York by J. P. Donleavy (one of my favorite authors), which Jem Finer, MacGowan’s co-writer on the song, was reading and had left lying around the studio.
Elvis Costello was the producer on the recoding session.
The song is performed by Bill Murray, Jenny Lewis, David Johansen, and Paul Shaffer in the Netflix special A Very Murray Christmas, which is required viewing in my home every December. When we had a Christmas party on my block last year, the DJ (my neighbor Brian) played this version, since it omits some language that doesn’t need to be broadcast to the neighborhood.
Kirsty MacColl sang the female part in the song. It was originally intended for Cait O’Riordan, the Pogues’ bassist, but when they were rehearsing the song they had MacColl lay down a vocal guide track and realized her voice was perfect for it. MacGowan said of her performance: “Kirsty knew exactly the right measure of viciousness and femininity and romance to put into it and she had a very strong character and it came across in a big way... In operas, if you have a double aria, it's what the woman does that really matters. The man lies, the woman tells the truth.”
The song also inspired a marvelous cocktail. (I recommend cutting the sugar in the syrup by about 1/3.)
At my friend Mike’s wedding reception in 2007, he got up with a guitar and sang this song to his wife, singing both parts himself. It was beautiful, but a lot of the guests looked confused and uncomfortable as they caught words like “slut” and “maggot” in his wedding song. Someone should write a book about Mike.