It’s Christmas eve, and, besides being Christmas, tomorrow is
the birthday of Shane MacGowan, famed lead singer of The Pogues and co-author
with Jem Finer, The Pogues’ banjo player, of today’s song (and the video isn't half bad either). “Fairytale of New
York,” its title taken from a novel by Irish author J. P. Donleavy, was
originally released in 1987 and has become one of the most popular Christmas
songs of our time, particularly in the UK. Perhaps it simply captures some essential
sentimentality associated with the holiday, and does so in a way that is equal
parts nostalgic and brash.
The song first came to my notice on the soundtrack of Julian
Schnabel’s film Basquiat (1996), but
only the segment of MacGowan singing solo was used, the part that might more
fittingly be called “Christmas Eve in the Drunk Tank.” That segment is full of
a down-and-out bravado that, in MacGowan’s wavering tenor, proclaims a drunkard’s
hopes for a new year, even as an elder inmate of the drunk tank avers he “won’t
see another” Christmas eve, and sings “The Rare Owld Mountain Dew.”
The idea of “the last one” is picked up in the dueling duet
between MacGowan and Kristy MacColl as lovers who have hit hard times in New
York rather than the rise in fortunes they’d hoped for. “They’ve got cars / Big
as bars,” was the fond dream. She reminds him, “you promised me / Broadway was
waiting for me.” The song also recalls a bygone New York when “Sinatra was
swinging” and “the boys of the NYPD choir / Were singing ‘Galway Bay,’” a time
when New York’s Finest were predominantly Irish.
That sense of both a welcome sense of home and a
disheartening sense of estrangement rides through the song, and finds its
pithiest expression in the name-calling between our sparring couple: “You’re a
bum / You’re a punk” she says; “You’re an old slut on junk” he replies, and she
really ups the invective with “You scum bag / You maggot / You cheap, lousy
faggot / Happy Christmas your arse / I pray God it’s our last.” And here the
instrumentation — the tin whistle especially — helps to create an upbeat feel even
in the midst of the mud-slinging. It may be the end of it, but the NYPD
singing, and the bells ringing out for Christmas Day come into present tense
and that little jolt makes us take stock, seasonally speaking.
In fact, that verbal jousting becomes part of what makes the
song better than the usual Christmas song. Since Christmas comes at the end of
the year, and returns each year, any long-term relationship lives through many
Christmases and finds its “state of the union” at times as the big clock rolls
around again. Tied-up with all that, of course, are the prospective dreams and
hopes—many of which are dashed as such things go. And that’s the element of the
song that MacGowan’s wonderfully romantic vocal keeps alive—“I could have been
someone,” “Well, so could anyone,” she replies, and accuses him of taking her
dreams “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.” It’s a
touch pathetic, but for that very reason feels heartfelt and brave. Whereas she’s
just doing the usual whining—like not getting what you wanted in your stocking—that
spoils many a Christmas.
Certainly, MacGowan’s part could all just be a compensatory
dream in a drunk tank, but it feels real. And that’s about all you can hope
for, for Christmas: a bearable reality. Getting dumped on by one’s best thing
is par for the course, all-too-often, and The Pogues’ song puts it out there. But
it also gives us a wish for the season that sounds hopeful and hard-bitten,
chastened and cheering:
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
Amen, I’ll drink to that.
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