Woof Guide to Popular Music: Fairytale of New York

“The boys of the NYPD choir are singing Galway Bay; and the bells are ringing out for Christmas day.”

Today being the Friday before Christmas, I’m presenting you with the Pogues’ song “Fairytale of New York”, a poignant (and occasionally vulgar) duet between Shane McGowan and the late Kirsty MacColl, in the personas of two people who are clearly no good together and yet somehow no good apart either. In my travels around the web I see this song mentioned more often than any other by the Pogues; and there’s something about it, and especially about MacColl’s voice on the chorus, that can sometimes move me to tears.

MacColl was the daughter of folksinger Ewan MacColl; I’ve got an album of him singing sea-chanties with A.L. Lloyd that I rather like, but I’m not finding them on Youtube. Consequently, here he is singing “The Calton Weaver”, aka “Nancy Whiskey”:

As I walked into Glasgow city
Nancy Whiskey I chanced to smell
I walked in, sat down beside her
Seven long years I loved her well
The more I kissed her, the more I loved her
The more I kissed her, the more she smiled
I forgot my mother’s teaching
Nancy soon had me beguiled