“Fairytale of New York” is a song written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan. It was originally released as a single on 23 November 1987 and later featured on the Pogues’ 1988 album If I Should Fall from Grace with God. To date the song has reached the UK Top 20 on 17 separate occasions since its original release in 1987. As of September 2017 it has sold 1,217,112 copies in the UK, with an additional 249,626 streaming equivalent sales, for a total of 1,466,737 combined sales.
About Fairytale of New York in brief
“Fairytale of New York” is a song written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan. It was originally released as a single on 23 November 1987 and later featured on the Pogues’ 1988 album If I Should Fall from Grace with God. To date the song has reached the UK Top 20 on 17 separate occasions since its original release in 1987, including every year at Christmas since 2005. As of September 2017 it has sold 1,217,112 copies in the UK, with an additional 249,626 streaming equivalent sales, for a total of 1,466,737 combined sales. It is frequently cited as the best Christmas song of all time in various television, radio and magazine related polls. In December 2012 the UK television special on ITV in December 2012 where it was voted The Nation’s Favourite Christmas Song. The song was recorded during the group’s sessions with Elvis Costello in January 1986, with bass player Caiti O’Riordan singing the female part. Costello suggested naming the song ‘Christmas Eve in the Drunk Tank’ but the band were scornful of the idea. The Pogues recorded the song during the song’s opening sessions with Costello, but the opening lines were not played to radio stations. In January 1986 the group recorded an EP called Poguetry in Motion, which featured the song as the opening track. The single never reached the coveted UK Christmas number one, being kept at number two by the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of \”Always on My Mind\”, it has proved enduringly popular with both music critics and the public.
It has been certified triple platinum in theUK in 2019, and has sold more than 1,200,000 copies worldwide. The band’s manager Frank Murray has stated that it was originally his idea that the band should try and write a Christmas song as he thought it would be ‘interesting’ The song’s title, the musical structure and its lyrical theme of a conversation between a couple were in place by the end of 1985, and were described as’sloppy’ in an interview with Melody Maker in its 1985 Christmas issue. The original concept for the song was set in County Clare on Ireland’s west coast, involving a sailor in New York looking out over the ocean and reminiscing about being back home in Ireland. Finer’s wife Marcia did not like the original seafaring story, and suggested new lyrics regarding a conversationBetween a couple at Christmas. In the same interview, MacGowan expressed regret that the song had not been completed in time to be released for Christmas that year, and hinted that the track would appear on an EP that the group would record shortly after. In fact, it was not released until January 1987, and the track was recorded shortly after that year’s Christmas Eve in the Drunk Tank EP. The group’s producer at the time, Elvis Costello, said that a song with such a title was unlikely to be played by radio stations and played by the band.
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This page is based on the article Fairytale of New York published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 09, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
