The late Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan wrote plenty of songs that were better than Fairytale of New York. He didn’t much rate it himself. But the swaying Christmas song co-written with fellow Pogue Jem Finer,
and which he sang with Kirsty MacColl, became his hardy perennial, a battered but beloved decoration to be dragged out every year. It endured, possibly because it eschewed the snowy sentimentality of so many Christmas songs for a duet that at times came on like a drunken domestic dispute, albeit one set to a lovely tune and stirring strings. In New Zealand alone, it has charted seven times since its late 1987 release, always at Christmas. The Pogues rarely played the song after a few UK shows with MacColl in 1988, one of which is pictured here. MacGowan, who died last month at the age of 65, left the Pogues in 1991, the year after the band’s second foray to NZ. The tours Downunder reportedly exacerbated his alcohol-fuelled mental instability – and his personal legend.
MacColl, who died in 2000, had other ties to the band. She was married to Pogues’ producer Steve Lillywhite and among the group’s early hits was Dirty Old Town, a song written by her Irish folk-singer father Ewan MacColl.
Another of MacGowan’s duet partners was Nick Cave. Together, they rubbed What a Wonderful World in their particular gravel. Cave wrote after hearing of MacGowan’s death: “He was the greatest songwriter of his generation, with the most terrifyingly beautiful of voices.”
