The Week:
The first thing to say about The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York” is that it is absurd when described in words.
Take an ever-soused Irish folk/punk band that includes a tin whistle player named Spider. Put them within a soaring orchestral arrangement, and task the shambolic front man with delivering a Christmas song. Make it a duet with a stage-fright afflicted singer who never quite became the pop starlet she wanted to be. The result is possibly the most sentimental Christmas song ever constructed, yet loved by people who spend December telling you, oh, how they despise sentimental Christmas songs.
While I wouldn’t call it the “greatest Christmas song of all time”, it is a great song and the article does a good job of describing its power.
As a non-Christian, I can easily say “Fairytale” is one of the extremely few Christmas songs I can happily listen to at any time.
Love this tune. Try “Christmas in Jail” for another charmer.
Any grown up who becomes concerned about descriptors like “greatest Christmas song of all time” needs to take a long look in the mirror unless they still are interested in Star War movies in which case that time, obviously, would be wasted.
I love that song. I played it when I was a college DJ at KUSF in San Francisco back in the late ’80s. When Shane MacGowan gets to “I’ve built my dreams around you” line I always get choked up.
I haven’t listened to this album in a while. I think it’s high time.
That seems unnecessarily rude.
My point being you can be so nerdy and focused you miss the forest for the trees and can’t let anything go and don’t approach things with a necessary sense of humor.
You not only proved my point but added one by displaying over sensitivity.
Stop taking things that are clearly meant to be fun so seriously. Especially on the interwebs.
Just so you know, even if it had a different tone in your head, for people reading that it didn’t come across at all as something meant to be fun. It came across as something clearly meant to be hurtful.
The tone is exactly as I meant it. Not fun and also shouldn’t be hurtful for adults given the context of what is being discussed. A grownup should be able to take constructive criticism. It was supposed to be almost satirical.
The main point being how rediculous it is for a grown man to take exception to a description like “Best Christmas song ever!!!!” and to stop being so nerdy and literal.
Like the song itself. You could find it really depressing if you didn’t approach with a certain level of sophistication based on grown up experience with the world but if you can approach it correctly then you can see the humor in the truth of it.
“Grow up, move out of your parents basement, kiss a girl, stop seeing everything as binary, when you get hurt on the internet by someones opinion take a step back and wonder if they were giving you a hard time because you deserve it, don’t be so precious about your opinions.” – Evil Capt. Kirk