"Fairytale of New York" is a song written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan and recorded by their London-based band the Pogues, featuring English singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl on vocals. The song is an Irish folk–style ballad and was written as a duet, with the Pogues' singer MacGowan taking the role of the male character, and MacColl playing the female character. It was originally released as a single on 23 November 1987 and later featured on the Pogues' 1988 album If I Should Fall from Grace with God.
Originally begun in 1985, the song had a troubled two-year development history, undergoing rewrites and aborted attempts at recording, and losing its original female vocalist along the way, before finally being completed in August 1987. Although the single has never been the UK Christmas number one, being kept at number two on its original release in 1987 by the Pet Shop Boys' cover of "Always on My Mind", it has proved enduringly popular with both music critics and the public: to date, the song has reached the UK Top 20 on twenty two occasions since its original release in 1987, including every year at Christmas since 2005. As of September 2017, it had sold 1.2 million copies in the UK, with an additional 249,626 streaming equivalent sales, for a total of 1.5 million combined sales. In December 2023, the song was certified sextuple platinum in the UK for 3.6 million combined sales. It is frequently cited as the best Christmas song of all time in various television, radio, and magazine-related polls in the UK and Ireland, including the UK television special on ITV in December 2012, where it was voted The Nation's Favourite Christmas Song.
Background and song development
Although there is agreement among the band that "Fairytale of New York" was first written in 1985, the origins of the song are disputed. MacGowan insisted that it arose as a result of a wager made by the Pogues' producer at the time, Elvis Costello, that the band would not be able to write a Christmas hit single, while the Pogues' manager Frank Murray has stated that it was originally his idea that the band should try to write a Christmas song as he thought it would be "interesting". Banjo player Finer came up with the melody and the original concept for the song, which was set in County Clare on Ireland's west coast, involving a sailor in New York looking out over the ocean and reminiscing about being back home in Ireland.
The song's title, the musical structure, and its lyrical theme of a conversation between a couple were in place by the end of 1985, and were described by MacGowan in an interview with Melody Maker in its 1985 Christmas issue:
MacGowan had decided to name the song after J. P. Donleavy's 1973 novel A Fairy Tale of New York, which Finer was reading at the time and had left lying around the recording studio. In the same Melody Maker interview, MacGowan expressed regret that the song had not been completed in time to be released for Christmas that year and hinted that the track would appear on an EP that the Pogues were due to record shortly. In January 1986, the group recorded the song during the sessions with Costello that would produce the Poguetry in Motion EP, with bass player Cait O'Riordan singing the female part. Costello suggested naming the song "Christmas Eve in the Drunk Tank", after the song's opening lines, but the band were scornful of Costello's suggestion, with MacGowan pointing out to Costello that a song with such a title was unlikely to be favourably received and played by radio stations.
However, despite several attempts at recording it, the group were unhappy with the results and the song was temporarily put aside, to be returned to at a later date. Guitarist Philip Chevron later said, "It was not quite there. It needed to have a full-on, confident performance from the band, which it lacked." The producer of the final version, Steve Lillywhite, diplomatically described the version recorded with O'Riordan's vocals as not "fully realised". The departure of O'Riordan meant the song had now lost its intended female singer.
MacGowan later said, "Kirsty knew exactly the right measure of viciousness and femininity and romance to put into it and she had a very strong character and it came across in a big way... In operas, if you have a double aria, it's what the woman does that really matters. The man lies, the woman tells the truth." MacGowan re-recorded his vocals alongside the tape of MacColl's contribution (the duo never recorded the song together in the studio) and the song was duly completed with the addition of a harp played by Siobhan Sheahan and horns and a string section. The French horns and strings were recorded at Townhouse Studios on the last day of recording If I Should Fall from Grace with God, arranged by Fiachra Trench after band member James Fearnley had mocked up an arrangement on a keyboard.
Reflecting on the recording of the song during a 2020 interview, MacGowan said "it was a happy time for the group. It's our Bohemian Rhapsody". He paid tribute to MacColl for lending her vocals to the song: "I was very grateful to Kirsty. I don't think it would have been such a big hit without her contribution." The footage was then slowed down and shown in brief sections to disguise the fact the Pipes and Drums were singing a different song. Lysette Cohen of Record Mirror also made the record one of the magazine's Singles of the Week, calling it "the most wonderful Christmas record ever" and "staggering and drunkenly inspirational". In NME, James Brown said that "The Pogues excel themselves and release a record worthy of the Christmas no. 1 spot", concluding that the band "have claimed the art of the ballad to be their own – on the strength of 'New York' they deserve it". Andy Darling of Melody Maker stated that he was turned off by the idea that drinking was a prerequisite for artistic genius, but that "this [song] makes up for a lot though".
Lyrical controversy and editing
When the song was performed on Top of the Pops on its initial release, the BBC requested that MacColl's singing of "arse" be replaced with the perceived-less-offensive "ass". During a live performance on Top of the Pops in January 1992, MacColl changed the lyric further, singing "You're cheap and you're haggard". When Katie Melua performed the song with the Pogues on CD:UK in December 2005, ITV censored the word "arse", but left "faggot" uncensored.
On 18 December 2007, BBC Radio 1 edited the words "faggot" and "slut" from the track to "avoid offence". MacColl's mother described the ban as "too ridiculous", while the Pogues said they found it "amusing". The BBC stated, "We are playing an edited version because some members of the audience might find it offensive". The BBC later announced they had reversed their decision and continued to play the song uncensored. Other BBC radio stations, including the traditionally more conservative Radio 2, had continued to play the original version throughout this period, the ban having applied to Radio 1 only. The MTV channels in the UK also removed and scrambled the words "slut", "faggot" and "arse" from the song.
In December 2018, two broadcasters on Ireland's RTÉ 2fm pop music station caused controversy by asking for the word "faggot" to be bleeped from broadcasts of the song. RTÉ announced they would not censor the lyric. Some days later, MacGowan defended the lyrics in a statement released to Virgin Media Television's The Tonight Show:
<blockquote>The word was used by the character because it fitted with the way she would speak and with her character. She is not supposed to be a nice person, or even a wholesome person. She is a woman of a certain generation at a certain time in history and she is down on her luck and desperate. Her dialogue is as accurate as I could make it but she is not intended to offend! She is just supposed to be an authentic character and not all characters in songs and stories are angels or even decent and respectable, sometimes characters in songs and stories have to be evil or nasty to tell the story effectively. If people don't understand that I was trying to accurately portray the character as authentically as possible, then I am absolutely fine with them bleeping the word, but I don't want to get into an argument.</blockquote>
In December 2019, BBC Radio Solent radio presenter Alex Dyke announced on his Twitter account that he would not be playing "Fairytale of New York" on his show, calling it a "nasty, nasty song" and "an offensive pile of downmarket chav bilge". Other journalists have also criticised the song's lyrics.
In November 2020, the BBC again announced that Radio 1 would play a censored version with the words "faggot" and "slut" removed, while Radio 2 would play the original, and 6 Music presenters would each decide for themselves which version to play. In response musician Nick Cave accused the BBC of "mutilating" the song, stating it would be "stripped of its value". However, since 2022 Radio 2 have played the radio edit supplied by the record company with the word "slut" muted and "You cheap lousy faggot" rephrased to "You're cheap and you're haggard". On 2 December 2023, The Telegraph reported that the UK's Boom Radio would play the uncensored version of "Fairytale of New York" after 91% of listeners who responded to a poll said they would not be offended by the lyrics.
Releases and promotion
The song was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in November 1987 and swiftly became a hit, spending five weeks at Number 1 in the Irish charts. On 17 December 1987, the Pogues and MacColl performed the song on the BBC's television show Top of the Pops, and it was propelled to number two on the official UK Top 75. Although the song finished 1987 as the 48th best seller of the year despite only a month's sales, it was denied the UK Christmas number one by the Pet Shop Boys' synth-pop version of "Always on My Mind". MacColl later said that she did not feel they were really in competition with the Pet Shop Boys as they were doing a completely different type of music.
The song was re-released by the Pogues in the UK in 1991 (reaching No. 36), and again in the UK and Ireland for Christmas 2005, reaching number three in the UK. All proceeds from the latter release were donated towards a mixture of homeless charities and Justice for Kirsty, a campaign to find out the truth behind MacColl's death in 2000. The song is considerably less well known in the US.
On hearing the song following the vocalist MacColl's death in 2000, MacGowan stated "for a while it used to depress me. But now I just think it's a tribute to Kirsty." On 13 December 2023, The Pogues reissued the song as a charity 7-inch single in tribute to MacGowan and to benefit the Dublin Simon Community, an organization fighting homelessness, that MacGowan supported.