‘Fairytale of New York’: The making of an iconic Christmas anthem by The Pogues
For decades, getting into the Christmas mood has been as easy as hearing the initial chords of ‘Fairytale of New York’. This widely loved festive anthem has set the backdrop for numerous lively nights filled with spirited singing about shattered dreams and forsaken aspirations. Composed by The Pogues’ Shane MacGowan and Jem Finer, and with vocals from Kirsty MacColl, the song was initially designed as a counterpoint to the usual festive tunes filled with holiday joy, but the story behind it runs much deeper than just that.
The Pogues, a band rooted in the enigmatic history of music, reach back into the bygone eras when the 1980s were enveloped in a wave of synth-pop allure. Amid the synth-pop surge, The Pogues stood out as one of the few bands that delved into the annals of history, embracing the ancient folk roots that paved the way. In essence, the band’s evolving mythology is steeped in tradition, making it unsurprising that they created one of Christmas’ most enduring classics.
However, ‘Fairytale of New York’ itself stands out as a bit of an anomaly. On the one hand, it defies traditional songwriting conventions; akin to a strange early 1990s dystopian movie, the song seems to emerge as if created to rescue the world from spiralling into an ill-fated alternate reality. Because of this, the festive anthem is intricately woven into the fabric of society, making it challenging to envision culture without its powerful influence.
From the initial famous guttural cry of “It was Christmas Eve, babe,” the sense of timelessness unravelling becomes evident, with a narrative that eschews the typical cheesy clichés of conventional Christmas tunes. Instead, it delves into the gritty reality of the drunk tank, even if it occasionally casts a contemplative gaze at the stars from its chosen spot in the spirit-soaked gutter.
The duet, among the most cutting that you’ll probably ever encounter, sees MacColl and MacGowan venting their festive frustrations in a narrative of loss, longing, and the lament of misspent youth. Although the exact date of its inception remains uncertain, as does the reason why the duo decided to release a Christmas song in the first place, the track’s title, musical composition, and the thematic essence of a dialogue between a couple were fully established by the end of 1985.
“I sat down, opened the sherry, got the peanuts out and pretended it was Christmas,” MacGowan told Melody Maker in its 1985 Christmas issue. “It’s even called ‘A Fairy Tale of New York’, it’s quite sloppy, more like ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’ than ‘Sally MacLennane’, but there’s also a céilidh bit in the middle which you can definitely dance to. Like a country and Irish ballad, but one you can do a brisk waltz to, especially when you’ve got about three of these [drinks] inside you… But the song itself is quite depressing in the end, it’s about these old Irish-American Broadway stars who are sitting round at Christmas talking about whether things are going okay.”
MacGowan opted to name the tune after J. P. Donleavy’s 1973 novel A Fairy Tale of New York, which Finer had casually left in the recording studio at the time. In the same Melody Maker interview, MacGowan hinted at the track appearing on an upcoming EP the Pogues were set to record shortly. The song’s recording took place in January 1986, during the sessions with Elvis Costello that led to Poguetry In Motion. Costello initially proposed naming the ditty ‘Christmas Eve in the Drunk Tank’ after its opening lines, but MacGowan dismissed the idea, stating that it might not be well-received.
As the song unfolded, there was a persistent sense of instinctual creativeness that led to its completion. As the band’s accordion player, James Fearnley, remarked: “It’s like ‘Fairytale of New York’ went off and inhabited its own planet.” The bulk of the lyrics were penned as MacGowan recuperated in a bed in Malmö after contracting double pneumonia while on a Pogues tour of Scandinavia in late 1985. “You get a lot of delirium and stuff, so I got quite a few good images out of that,” he later explained.
Fearnley also recalled the initial impetus for the track originating in a row of its own — the band’s manager wanted them to break into the Christmas market with a cover of the lesser-known track ‘Christmas Must Be Tonight’ by The Band. However, Fearnley and the rest of the group decided that it wasn’t as good as it could be. “It was an awful song,” Fearnley said, “We probably said, f*** that, we can do our own.”
Hence, the idea of composing an original number fuelled by spite gained traction. Finer initiated the process by attempting to craft a Christmas song centred around a lovelorn sailor missing his wife at sea. However, his own beloved wife promptly dismissed his floated concept. “So I said, okay,” Finer recalls, “You suggest a storyline, and I’ll write another one. The basic plot line came from her: this idea of a couple falling on hard times and coming eventually to some redemption.”
When Finer proposed New York as the backdrop, inspired by the tumultuous couple he and his partner knew, MacGowan readily embraced the idea after developing a fascination with the cinematic depiction of the city through obsessive re-watches of the film Once Upon a Time in America while on tour. Spending two years sweating over the anthem, ‘Fairytale of New York’ mirrored the laborious process of coaxing timelessness from dedicated devotion.
Throughout the process of crafting the song, MacGowan unveiled the genuine duality of his character, saying that he “identified with the man because I was a hustler,” while he also “identified with the woman because I was a heavy drinker and a singer. I have been in hospitals on morphine drips, and I have been in drunk tanks on Christmas Eve.”
This is also reflected by Finer, who said: “A stable perception was never reachable as to whether Shane was a genius or a f***ing idiot.” It is human to be both and that is luminously illustrated in the effort, as well as its final message of a sense of redemption. However, even this seems fragile. “You really don’t know what is going to happen to them,” MacGowan suggested. “The ending is completely open.”
Moreover, this unresolved concluding note imparts a particular beauty to the song. Much of the track unfolds beyond the lyrics, verses, and vignettes enclosed within. With each passing year, our individual interpretations materialise, transforming the amorphous narrative, ensuring it remains ever-changing, ever-fresh, and perpetually interwoven into the tapestry of Christmas, whether one grows older, younger, or wiser to the ways of the world.
