"It's that time of year again - no, we're not talking about filling our homes with gaudy Christmas decorations and watching endless reruns of Nigella's Christmas cookery shows and every version of A Christmas Carol ever made. What we are talking about is the "Fairytale of New York" homophobia discourse, which rears its head each year and was reignited in 2023 after the death of The Pogues lead singer Shane MacGowan at the age of 65."
"In case you've spent the past few Christmases sleeping under a rock, here's the main thrust: in 1987, English-Irish punk band The Pogues released an "anti-Christmas" song called "Fairytale of New York". The Christmas music market of the day was all about cloying festive cheer - think Wham!'s "Last Christmas" or Chris Rea's "Driving Home for Christmas" - which immediately set the new song apart as something different, and perhaps even necessary."
"The song is a sorry story about an Irish immigrant as he reflects on Christmases of yesteryear with a former lover while he slowly sobers up in a New York drunk tank. It's a furious track about a toxic relationship that went wrong, with an impassioned Kirsty MacColl delivering one of her best vocal performances. It's a brilliant song, and it's not difficult to see why it has such broad appeal."
An annual controversy returns around the Pogues' 1987 song "Fairytale of New York" because of a homophobic slur in its lyrics. The song, framed as an anti-Christmas track amid cloying festive hits, tells the sorry story of an Irish immigrant reflecting on past Christmases while sobering up in a New York drunk tank. The track portrays a toxic relationship with impassioned vocals from Kirsty MacColl and broad popular appeal for representing Christmas misery. The debate resurfaces each year, intensified in 2023 after Shane MacGowan's death, and connects to wider tensions over slurs, "woke" politics and cancel culture.
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