Fairy­tale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty Mac­Coll is an Irish folk-style bal­lad and Christ­mas song, writ­ten by Jem Fin­er and Shane Mac­Gowan. It was released in Novem­ber 1987 after two years in the mak­ing and – although it nev­er quite made the num­ber one slot in the UK Sin­gles Chart (it was kept off it by the Pet Shop Boys’ Always on my Mind) – has proved endur­ing­ly pop­u­lar, con­sis­tent­ly top­ping polls of the “nation’s all-time favourite” Christ­mas songs.

The open­ing lines make it evi­dent that this is no typ­i­cal Christ­mas song: it’s Christ­mas Eve in a New York City drunk tank, with an Irish immi­grant in ine­bri­at­ed rever­ie about the song’s female char­ac­ter, and their hopes and dreams, des­tined to be crushed by alco­hol, drugs and cir­cum­stance. No bells jin­gling and chil­dren play­ing here.

The famous call-and-response duel between Shane Mac­Gowan and Kirsty MaColl is doubt­less the ele­ment that stamps its mark on the listener’s con­scious­ness, with its amus­ing tirade of abuse in words only just on the right side of the radio cen­sor (in fact, Radio 1 did ban the words “slut” and “fag­got” on 18^th Decem­ber 2007, only to reverse the ban lat­er in the same day due to crit­i­cism from lis­ten­ers, the band, and Kirsty MacColl’s moth­er!). I might add, inci­den­tal­ly, that “fag­got” is Irish slang for a lazy, no-good per­son, so need not be con­fused with the pejo­ra­tive word for “gay”.

The melo­di­ous voice of Mac­Coll fits in per­fect­ly with MacGowan’s rough drawl, though the involve­ment of Mac­Coll only came about due to a fall­out between the band and the orig­i­nal choice for the female voice, bass play­er Cait O’Riordan. When O’Riordan left the band in Octo­ber 1986, pro­duc­er Steve Lily­white sug­gest­ed let­ting his wife (Mac­Coll) lay down a new guide vocal for the song, sim­ply with a view to help­ing future audi­tions. When they heard it, the band of course loved it and realised that this was the voice for the song. As Mac­Gowan was quot­ed lat­er: “Kirsty knew exact­ly the right mea­sure of vicious­ness and fem­i­nin­i­ty and romance to put into it”.

Backed by the con­sum­mate musi­cian­ship of the Pogues, the song’s vocals and lyri­cism add up to a very round­ed, mean­ing­ful and bit­ter­sweet piece of music that has unar­guably cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of a nation. Mer­ry Christ­mas!

It was Christ­mas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won’t see anoth­er one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Moun­tain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eigh­teen to one
I’ve got a feel­ing
This year’s for me and you
So hap­py Christ­mas
I love you baby
I can see a bet­ter time
When all our dreams come true

They’ve got cars big as bars
They’ve got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It’s no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christ­mas Eve
You promised me
Broad­way was wait­ing for me

You were hand­some
You were pret­ty
Queen of New York City
When the band fin­ished play­ing
They howled out for more
Sina­tra was swing­ing,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a cor­ner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells were ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day

You’re a bum
You’re a punk
You’re an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scum­bag, you mag­got
You cheap lousy fag­got
Hap­py Christ­mas your arse
I pray God it’s our last

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells were ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day

I could have been some­one
Well so could any­one
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can’t make it all alone
I’ve built my dreams around you

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells are ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day