The Story Of 'Fairytale Of New York'
It was Christmas Eve, babe
In the drunk tank.
It's not a happy song. It's more like an entire Charles Bukowski novel jammed into three minutes. But again and again, The Pogues 'Fairytale of New York" is cited by many as the greatest Christmas tune ever. Via the Guardian:
In the finished version the story finally acquires the ring of truth, but it's still teasingly elliptical. Does the argument take place after the man leaves the drunk tank or does the whole song unfold in his sozzled head? After all, Once Upon a Time in America is told almost entirely in flashback. And while the "cars big as bars" and the singing of Galway Bay (a 1948 hit for Bing Crosby, beloved of Irish immigrants) place the action in the 1940s, MacGowan suggests that the characters are much older, remembering their glory days.
And can we trust the narrator anyway? "The guy is a bum who is living on the street," says MacGowan. "And he's just won on a horse at the unlikely odds of 18-to-one, so you're not even sure he is telling the truth." He says that both characters are versions of himself. "I identified with the man because I was a hustler and I identified with the woman because I was a heavy drinker and a singer. I have been in hospitals on morphine drips, and I have been in drunk tanks on Christmas Eve."