9/1/2023 0 Comments Fairytale of new york lyrics![]() ![]() ![]() The scene is almost certainly autobiographical as is a later detail in the song where MacGowan describes his former love as, “Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed.”Īs MacGowan told the Guardian newspaper in 2012, “I have been in hospitals on morphine drips and I have been in drunk tanks on Christmas Eve.” “I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different.” Eliot’s The Journey of the Magi echoes the same theme: “Were we led all that way for Birth or Death?” asks the Magus. On the eve of Christ’s birth, we are confronted very starkly with the seedy side of life, a reminder that not all is hope and joy, but that there are drunks, and homeless, and addicts, and the destitute, and the poor, and all sorts of people who won’t be having a Merry Christmas.Īnd there is also the forthcoming death of an old man that serves as a counterpoint to the birth of Christ. “It was Christmas Eve babe In the drunk tank An old man said to me, Won’t see another one.” ![]() Written by MacGowan, a drunk, a heroin addict and a man of few teeth, it always promised to be a different Christmas song, and from the very opening we know it. The continued success of “Fairytale of New York” lies, not only in the music, the mixture of joyful and sad, but in its authenticity, its ability to tell a story, the power of its images and words. The duet between MacGowan and the very talented - and too soon deceased - Kirsty MacColl regularly features in Britain as one of the all time great Christmas songs (last week a survey voted it the most popular Christmas song in the U.K.). But captured between those lyrics is a story of starry-eyed lovers, big-city dreams, hopes shattered, illusions spoiled, Christmases - both idyllic and nightmarish - and finally - finally - redemption. Personally, I don’t want kids singing in the back of my car at all.
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