This song tells the story of an Irish couple who immigrate to America in hopes of making it as entertainers in New York. The song takes place on Christmas Eve, and with the title "Fairytale of New York," you'd expect a happy ending, but these two end up destitute, their dreams in disrepair. It's in the same universe as sad songs for the holiday like "
Blue Christmas," but with the pithy dialogue sung in an Irish brogue ("You're a bum!... You're a punk!") it's bawdy fun offering an amusing alternative to Christmas cheer.
If you're sick of Christmas and Christmas music, this is the song for you. The couple in the song bicker the whole way through and there's no Christmas miracle. It's a reminder that Christmas doesn't just erase our problems.
Why would someone write such a song? On a bet. According to Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan, it originated when Elvis Costello bet that he and the band's banjo player Jem Finer couldn't come up with a slushy Christmas duet. Costello produced The Pogues' 1985 album Rum, Sodomy & The Lash and the following year married their bass player, Cait O'Riordan.
The lead singers on "Fairytale of New York" are Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan and guest vocalist Kirsty MacColl, an English pop singer well known in the UK, where her hits include "A New England" and "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis."
When Shane MacGowan and Jem Finer wrote the song in 1986, they envisioned it as a duet between MacGowan and Cait O'Riordan. They didn't have the song ready in time to release it as a Christmas single in 1986, so they didn't record it until 1987. By this time, O'Riordan had left the group and they were being produced by Steve Lillywhite, who was married to Kirsty MacColl. He had her record a scratch vocal that was so good the band decided to keep it instead of going after a more famous singer like Chrissie Hynde. The song was released as a single in time for Christmas 1987, and in January 1988 was included on the third Pogues album, If I Should Fall From Grace With God.
At first, this song had lyrics about a sailor and a distant ocean, but Jem Finer's wife suggested he change it to be about a couple at Christmas who are hard on their luck. Finer wrote another song and took both to MacGowan, who combined the melody of the first with the story line of the second.
The song was released as a Christmas single in 1987 and almost became the coveted UK Christmas #1, but it stopped at #2, blocked by The Pet Shop Boys' cover of "Always On My Mind."
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Shane MacGowan was born on Christmas Day, 1957. His parents were Irish but had emigrated to England, where Shane was born. He identified as Irish and was raised in Tipperary by his aunt until age 6 when he moved back to England with his parents and eventually formed The Pogues. Like the character in this song, MacGowan had a severe drinking problem, as did his dad. He became known for drunken antics on stage, and by 1991 his alcoholism left him incapacitated and he was kicked out of the band, replaced by Joe Strummer of The Clash. The Pogues broke up in 1996 and re-formed in 2001 with MacGowan. He died on November 30, 2023 at 65 after a battle with encephalitis.
The title was taken from JP Donleavy's 1961 novel A Fairytale of New York, which is also about an Irishman who comes to New York, but with a very different plot. The author told The Daily Mail December 18, 2009: "Technically I could have taken legal action for piracy but as I know Shane MacGowan - I believe his father is a fan of my work - I decided not to bother."
The music video was directed by Peter Dougherty and plays out the story of the song, with scenes of Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl in character around New York City. And yes, the policeman pushing MacGowan through the station on his way to the drunk tank is indeed Matt Dillon.
The video ends with MacGowan and MacColl dancing in the snow, offering a glimmer of hope.
"Fairytale of New York" was used to open the 1996 film Basquiat, about a graffiti artist who becomes popular in the art community. It also appears in the movies P.S. I Love You (2007) and Run All Night (2015), the Ted Lasso episode "Carol Of The Bells" (2021), and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022).
On December 18, 2000, Kirsty MacColl died in a boating accident. This single has been re-released several times for the UK Christmas market. In 2005 it was re-issued to publicize a new campaign for an investigation into the death of McColl.
After charting at #3 in the UK in 2005, #6 in 2006, and #4 in 2007 , "Fairytale of New York" became the first Christmas song to make the UK Top 10 three years in a row. The tune has continued to appear in the top 20 each year.
During the fifth verse MacGowan's character refers to MacColl's character as "an old slut on junk," to which MacColl responds:
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap, lousy faggot
In 2007, the BBC began playing a version with the word "faggot" edited out. After a predictable outrage, they began playing the uncut version.
MacGowan responded to the controversy in 2019 saying: "There is no political correctness to it. I've been told it's insulting to gays; I don't understand how that works. Nobody in the band thinks that's worth a second's thought."
The singer added: "The word was used by the character because it fitted with the way she would speak and with her character. She is not supposed to be a nice person, or even a wholesome person. She is a woman of a certain generation at a certain time in history and she is down on her luck and desperate."
The lyric, "The boys of the NYPD choir still singing 'Galway Bay,'" isn't strictly true. The NYPD doesn't actually have a choir, though they do have an Irish pipe band that is featured in the music video. The pipe band didn't know "Galway Bay," so they played the "Mickey Mouse Club March" instead, and the promo was later slowed down to fit the beat.
The pipe band had been drinking on the coach that brought them to the video shoot. By the time they turned up for the filming they were even more drunk than The Pogues themselves and refused to appear unless they were given more alcohol.
A few brave souls, mostly Irish musicians, have deigned to cover "Fairytale of New York," running the risk of backlash because the Pogues original is so iconic. When Bon Jovi covered the song in 2020 on their
A Jon Bon Jovi Christmas EP, it gave some fans of the original the taste of a wormy chestnut. The Pogues made their thoughts clear by
retweeting this comment from the musician Rob Smith:
"It's the worst thing to ever happen music, and I am including both the murder of John Lennon and Brian McFadden's solo career in there."
In 2004 VH1 poll, this was voted the UK's favorite Christmas song of all time.
The Pogues never got much traction in America and "Fairytale of New York" never charted there, but it did gradually find following as Americans discovered it. In 2023, the star football-playing brothers Jason and Travis Kelce released their own version of the song called "
Fairytale Of Philadelphia," credited to The Philly Specials (Jason plays for the Philadelphia Eagles). This version quickly garnered over a million streams and brought the song to a much wider audience in the US, including a wide swath of Swifties - Travis was dating Taylor Swift and on the radar of many of her fans.
The Kelces turn the song into a battle among brothers, with some Philly references and updated insults. Broad Street and the Schuylkill River get mentions, and the boys call each other dirtbag, crum bum, and lousy Jabroni.
They posted the song on November 15, 2023, just two weeks before Shane MacGowan died.