FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK

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

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

---

copyright 1988 Shane MacGowan & Jem Finer

 

“Fairytale of New York” is a popular Christmas song by Irish folk-rock group The Pogues, and featuring the English singer Kirsty MacColl. The song is an Irish folk style ballad, written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan, and featured on The Pogues’ album If I Should Fall from Grace with God. The song features string arrangements by Fiachra Trench.

 

“Fairytale of New York” was released as a single in 1987 and reached #1 in the Irish charts and #2 in the British charts, over Christmas (the time of peak sales). The song has become a festive classic in the UK and Ireland over the years, and was voted the best Christmas song of all time three years running in 2004^[1], 2005^[2] and 2006 in polls by music channel VH1 UK, despite not achieving Christmas Number One when it was released. It was also voted as the 27th greatest song never to reach UK#1 in another VH1 poll, and also voted as the 84th greatest song of all time by BBC Radio 2 listeners in their “Sold on Song” top 100 poll.

The song takes the form of a drunken man’s Christmas Eve reverie about holidays past while sleeping off a binge in a New York City drunk tank. After an inebriated old man also incarcerated in the jail cell sings a passage from the Irish drinking ballad The Rare Old Mountain Dew, the drunken man (MacGowan) begins to dream about a failed relationship. The remainder of the song (which may be an internal monologue) takes the form of a call and response between two Irish immigrants, lovers or ex-lovers, their youthful hopes crushed by alcoholism and drug addiction, reminiscing and bickering on Christmas Eve in New York City. MacColl’s melodious singing contrasts with the harsh sound of MacGowan’s voice and the lyrics are sometimes bittersweet, sometimes plain bitter: “Happy Christmas your arse/ I pray God it’s our last”. The lyric “Sinatra was swinging” has been taken by some to suggest an unspecified period after World War II; however, it is possible that the song is actually set in the early 1980s, when one of Sinatra’s last chart hits, his 1980 recording of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s theme from the movie “New York, New York“, was a fixture of New York City airwaves and a standard singalong record in the city’s many neighborhood bars. The title, taken from author J. P. Donleavy’s novel A Fairy Tale of New York, was chosen after the song had been written and recorded.

Despite the lyrics “The boys of the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay“, the New York Police Department does not have a choir, though they do have a Pipes and Drums unit that is featured in the video for the song.

MacColl was not originally intended to appear in the song. Instead, the female vocal was meant for the band’s bassist, Cait O’Riordan. However, she left the band in 1986, before the song was completed. The Pogues were at the time being produced by Steve Lillywhite, MacColl’s then-husband, who asked his wife to provide a guide vocal of the female part for a demo version of the song. The Pogues, however, liked MacColl’s contribution so much that they asked her to sing the part on the actual recording.^[3]

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