Fairytale of New York

The Story Behind The Song

As befits a band that enjoyed the odd tipple, there’s a bit of confusion as to where the initial idea for ‘Fairytale of New York’ came from. Shane MacGowan insists that it was Elvis Costello, at the time the band’s producer, who bet that the band couldn’t come up with a Christmas song that wasn’t, as Shane put it, “jingly-jangly happy Christmas.” Jem Finer disagrees, recalling instead that the notion came from Irish music hero and Pogues manager, (the late) Frank Murray, who, according to Jem, suggested they record a song like The Band’s ‘Christmas Must Be Tonight’. Which is how Frank Murray told it too.

Either way, it was Finer who set to work on a Christmas song, first of all writing a seasonal duet about a sailor. His wife suggested changing it to a story about a couple fighting because the man had lost all their money gambling. Finer showed the bones of the song to MacGowan and Shane got stuck in. He moved the story to New York, taking it ever-closer to the one we now know, about two Irish emigrants going through hard times. Shane arrived at the title of the song when he spotted the cover of the book Finer was reading in the studio, J.P Donleavy’s A Fairy Tale Of New York. He even went as far as arranging to meet Donleavy to ask his permission – although there’s no other link between the song and the novel, which tells the story of American Cornelius Christian returning to New York from Ireland and taking a job in a funeral home to pay for his wife’s funeral.

Ennio Morricone was another influence. MacGowan and bandmate Spider Stacey watched Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America repeatedly and accordingly ‘purloined’ a few opening notes from the Morricone-composed ‘Deborah’s Theme’ on the film’s soundtrack. The band recorded early versions of the song with Costello during the sessions that produced their acclaimed Rum, Sodomy & The Lash album, with bass player Cait O’Riordan taking the female vocal. Costello is reported to have suggested ‘Christmas Eve In The Drunk Tank’ as the title – which was what, in aviation, they call a ‘near miss’: it never would have flown on radio. 

Unusually, except perhaps with Bob Dylan and U2, you can chart the progress of the song over a period of time. There are three different extant demo versions of the track, which were included in the band’s 2008 box set Just Look Them Straight In The Eye And Say… POGUEMAHONE!!. They chart its progress, as the lyrics – completed by MacGowan in a state of delirium as he recovered from double pneumonia in a Malmö bed – and the musical style start to coalesce.  

By the time the band were working on their next album, If I Should Fall From Grace With God, they had parted company with O’Riordan and Costello and were working with producer Steve Lillywhite. Married to the singer Kirsty MacColl, the frequent U2 collaborator took the track home to see what she would make of the female part. The band were sceptical – until they heard the results, that is. Kirsty had nailed it, prompting MacGowan to re-do his own vocal part, all the better to heighten the drama.

The finished record is a slice of enduring musical genius. Like exiled Irish songwriters James Geoghegan and Jack Judge before him, Shane MacGowan stokes the fires of nostalgia with references to Irish classics, ‘The Rare Auld Mountain Dew’ and ‘Galway Bay’ – but it is done in a way that never feels forced. The vocals are brilliant, with Shane and Kirsty playing off one another to powerful effect. And it is all set against a beautifully arranged ensemble treatment that’s gorgeously finessed by Steve Lilywhite’s superb production. There would, of course, later be controversy about some of the more earthy language used in the song, but MacGowan would quite rightly insist that this was how those characters would have talked in that situation. To water it down or sanitise the language would rob the song of its realism and lessen its impact. 

Frank Murray placed several bets that ‘Fairytale of New York’ would top the charts at Christmas. It did so in Ireland, which pleased MacGowan – then on a trip back to his family in Tipperary – no end. But in the UK, where the bets were laid, it was held off the coveted festive top spot by the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of ‘Always On My Mind’.

Since then, the song has entered the very fabric of Christmas, breaching the Top 20 in eighteen different years, selling in excess of 2.4 million units in the UK and earning the title of the most played Christmas song of all time. Hearing it beamed out again – whether in a shop, a bar, or on the radio – indicates for many that the Christmas season has arrived. ‘Fairytale of New York’ has become, in songwriting terms, the ultimate ‘hardy perennial’.

There have, of course, been endless cover versions, with Christy Moore, Ronan Keating featuring Máire Brennan, Damien Dempsey & Sinead O’Connor, Irish Tenors, Razorlight, KT Tunstall, Amy MacDonald, Jesse Malin with Bree Sharp, Johnny Logan, Celtic Thunder, Gavin James, Paloma Faith featuring Scouting for Girls, Ed Sheeran and Ann Marie, and Jon Bon Jovi among the better-known stars who have had a go. It has also been translated into Dutch, German, Swedish, Icelandic and Italian.

But, in truth, there can be no matching the extraordinary magic of the original. It is a song that was only started because of a bet. And that almost didn’t happen because circumstances were against it. And yet, here it is: surely, the greatest Christmas record of them all.