Fairytale: Behind The Pogues Holiday Hit

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Published 2023-12-02

The Pogues released their unusually raw Holiday Song "Fairytale of New York" in 1987. With the mournful, salty, sadly nostalgic song, the Londoners scored a #1 Christmas hit in Ireland and became a staple of cool Christmas mixes across the globe. Shane MacGowan & Kirsty MacColl nailed one of the greatest duets in Christmas music history, with The Pogues perfectly providing the instrumental support. But some language choices had media companies scrambling to censor or edit the holiday hit as it exploded in popularity. In this video we talk about how the song came about, some fun trivia about it, and the controversy surrounding it. We also have a reaction from McGowan on the subject, and we reveal the WORST COVER of Fairytale of New York... ever.

RIP SHane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl.

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THE BEST OF THE POGUES ON VINYL - a great collection, which of course has "Fairytale" - amzn.to/3Gp75EO

Drawings by Ballette
Music from Epidemic Sound
B-Roll and snaps from Pixabay.com

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#ThePogues #shanemacgowan #fairytaleofnewyork

00:00 A Fake Piano Player
00:17 Born On Christmas Day
01:00 The Pogues
01:18 Fairytale Of New York
02:58 The name of the song
03:18 Cait leaves the band
04:05 In The Studio with Kirsty MacColl
04:39 The Music Video
05:50 Censoring a Fairytale
07:44 Alternate version, Tik-tok and Guardians of The Galaxy
08:33 Bill Murray, Bon Jovi. Crimes?

All Comments (11)

@rocdocs 7 months ago

Worth mention: The song was performed to great effect at the mans funeral. A brilliant performance that deserves watching. https://youtu.be/ptayWtW1So8?si=f9oBVyrXhGDTb9pj
@maybeitsneato 8 months ago

I heard this song on the radio only very recently and instantly fell in love with it. It feels very timely that you released the video now, for me at least, and because of the time of year. I'm pretty sure the version I heard was uncensored. Very awesome to add a pogues song to my Christmas playlist. I've also listened to more Kirsty McColl and quite like her solo stuff as well.
@ecfan-addict9477 8 months ago

Kirsty was an angel, her death in 2000 was devastating...right before Xmas 😢 I'm glad her beautiful voice is heard every year and that this song is immortal. Now check out her solo stuff and her duets with Moz!
@PureEdTV 8 months ago

Nice! I didn’t know much about the history of this Christmas classic, so most of the information in this video was new to me.
@TheCousinEddie 8 months ago

Great job, Mr. Ball. I'm glad Shane didn't apologize for using the colorful language of his characters. Why would anybody be offended? It's a conversation between two fictional people-he wasn't assigning an epithet to the listener. Familiarize yourself wit the context, people!
@Novanova501 7 months ago

Shane was born in UK when his Irish parents were on holiday there he lived in Ireland till 7 yrs old then they moved to the UK as his dad's job took him there to work and live
@rocdocs 8 months ago

WATCH NOW: The Story Of The Smiths 🥀🌻🎸📚 https://youtu.be/MD5wdefKeBs?si=qf29wv3Zqwovgrk6
@jacksampsonforever 8 months ago

Merry Xmas, Dennis! My trivia for this video is: the Pogues were originally called Pogue Mahone, Gaelic for "Kiss my arse".
@MrMichaelAndrews 8 months ago

Yo, let's go. You're almost at 10,000. So cool
@AndrewWatchingYouTube 7 months ago

Censoring songs is like have a nice cake but cutting parts of it out and throwing it in the bin, its not the same...