Fairytale of New York

Fairytale of New York — The Pogues The greatest anti-Christmas Christmas song, and a small drunken miracle of storytelling. The Pogues open it deceptively, Shane MacGowan alone at a saloon piano singing from a drunk tank on Christmas Eve, before the tin whistle, accordion and fiddle kick the whole thing into a swaggering Celtic-punk reel. It's a duet and a marriage in collapse: MacGowan's slurred, ruined romanticism trading verses with the late Kirsty MacColl's bright, scathing wit. They arrive in New York young and full of dreams — "you were handsome, you were pretty, queen of New York City" — then curdle into addiction, failure and the infamous trading of insults ("you scumbag, you maggot"), the bitterest line undercut by an unmistakable tenderness. The NYPD choir sings "Galway Bay," bells ring out, and the immigrant fairytale lands somewhere between elegy and stubborn love. It's gorgeous and squalid at once, sentimental without a drop of saccharine, which is exactly why it endures where chirpier carols don't. A perennial UK fixture every December, it's the song for everyone whose holidays carry a little wreckage — played loud in a crowded pub near closing time, half the room shouting along, the other half quietly moved, both reactions entirely correct.