![]() ![]() Startlingly, violently, in a blaze of recriminations, hatred and insults. She becomes the Queen of New York City, the crowds howl out for more - what could go wrong?Īnd it comes crashing down. For our lovers, they come true in New York some time in the 1940s when the cars are as big as bars, when Sinatra was swinging and when the NYPD choir was singing “Galway Bay,” a mega hit for Bing Crosby after recording it in 1947. “So happy Christmas I love you baby I can see a better time When all our dreams come true.”Īnd the dreams do come true. The scene is almost certainly autobiographical as is a later detail in the song where MacGowan describes his former love as, “Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed.”Īs MacGowan told the Guardian newspaper in 2012, “I have been in hospitals on morphine drips and I have been in drunk tanks on Christmas Eve.” “I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different.” Eliot’s The Journey of the Magi echoes the same theme: “Were we led all that way for Birth or Death?” asks the Magus. On the eve of Christ’s birth, we are confronted very starkly with the seedy side of life, a reminder that not all is hope and joy, but that there are drunks, and homeless, and addicts, and the destitute, and the poor, and all sorts of people who won’t be having a Merry Christmas.Īnd there is also the forthcoming death of an old man that serves as a counterpoint to the birth of Christ. “It was Christmas Eve babe In the drunk tank An old man said to me, Won’t see another one.” Written by MacGowan, a drunk, a heroin addict and a man of few teeth, it always promised to be a different Christmas song, and from the very opening we know it. ![]() The continued success of “Fairytale of New York” lies, not only in the music, the mixture of joyful and sad, but in its authenticity, its ability to tell a story, the power of its images and words. The duet between MacGowan and the very talented - and too soon deceased - Kirsty MacColl regularly features in Britain as one of the all time great Christmas songs (last week a survey voted it the most popular Christmas song in the U.K.). ![]() But captured between those lyrics is a story of starry-eyed lovers, big-city dreams, hopes shattered, illusions spoiled, Christmases - both idyllic and nightmarish - and finally - finally - redemption. Personally, I don’t want kids singing in the back of my car at all. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.Here’s hoping the word will, at the very least, be kept out of beloved family comedies and daytime radio stations going forward. Did it prevent straight people aggressively screaming the word “f*****” with immunity? Absolutely. ![]() It can’t simply be 21 st Century values applied retroactively since the singer of the line felt compelled to alter the words more than a quarter of a century ago when she sang, “You’re cheap and you’re haggard”.ĭid the lyric change drastically change the meaning of the song? Of course not. Though this is arguable since Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan used similarly offensive language about the Pet Shop Boys when their cover of Always on My Mind kept Fairytale of New York off the Christmas top spot in 1987.īut the plot thickens, as it has emerged that the late Kirsty MacColl actually changed the lyric during a live performance on Top of the Pops in 1992. Those defending the explicit homophobic slut in the song often blame “political correctness” and insist the song is written from the viewpoint of a character. Whether it’s arguments over Gavin & Stacey or radio stations deciding to censor the song, arguments over the lyrics in Fairytale of New York have become a British Christmas tradition. ![]()
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