Fairytale of New York soars to top of iTunes chart amid campaign to make Shane MacGowan’s hit song Christmas No1 – as baby boomer radio station vows to play the original expletive-filled version
Shane MacGowan’s hit song Fairytale of New York has soared to the top of the iTunes chart amid a campaign to make it Christmas number one following his death.
The classic Christmas song, released by the Irish rocker’s band The Pogues alongside singer Kirsty MacColl in 1987, charts every year but has never reached the coveted festive top spot.
Fans of the band are pushing to give it the title they feel it deserves after MacGowan’s death at the age of 65 last week, and it seems things are off to a good start with the song topping the iTunes UK chart today.
The song has also reached number six on the UK Spotify charts, while it reached number 18 in the weekly Official Charts listings on Friday.
The anthem finished behind hits by Wham! and Mariah Carey, but chart bosses say the 36-year-old anthem is sizing up to be a ‘genuine contender’ come the last Friday before Christmas.
The 1987 classic features Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl performing a duet
The song has proven supremely popular, although in recent years it has proved controversial for some of its lyrics including one in which MacColl calls MacGowan a ‘f****t’
The late Irish rocker’s wife Victoria Mary Clarke has thrown her weight behind the campaign, saying she is ‘very much in favour’ of a push to get to the top of the charts.
READ MORE HERE: Nick Cave shares heartbreaking tribute to his late friends The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan and Sinead O’Connor
Clarke, 57, who first met MacGowan when she was 16 and was by his side when he died on Thursday, has given her approval to the bid to give the song the chart position that fans believe it deserves in memory of the raucous folk star.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Irish journalist Clarke said: ‘It would be nice, wouldn’t it? It should be the Christmas number one. It absolutely should. I’m very much in favour of that.’
Clarke also told the programme that, behind closed doors, MacGowan was a very different man to his very cynical and boisterous public persona.
She added that the staunch Irish republican liked to watch documentaries about the Royal Family, and cried when Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Diana died.
She said: ‘He always buying flowers and he was just a really romantic man.’
It comes as one baby boomer radio station vowed to play the original version of the song to its listeners this festive season, after controversy in previous years over the BBC ‘censoring’ it.
Boom Radio said despite the classic Christmas song including the homophobic slur ‘f****t’ and MacGowen’s character calling his lover ‘an old sl*t on junk’, its listeners would not be offended and so would play the 1987 version.
Fairytale of New York is The Pogues’ best known song and a festive favourite – but it has never reached number one at Christmas
Victoria Mary Clarke pictured with Shane MacGowan in 1999. The pair met when Clarke was 16
The pair pictured in 2012. They were engaged for 11 years before finally getting married in Copenhagen in 2018
A survey on the stations website found that 91 per cent of those who responded believed it should be played uncensored.
In recent years some radio stations have gone to lengths to hide the word, with BBC Radio 1 muting it in 2007 as ‘members of the audience might find it offensive’.
READ MORE HERE: Shane MacGowan’s band The Pogues slam The Guardian’s ‘terrible’ obituary which describes the musician as having ‘broken teeth and large ears’ following his death aged 65
Although the decision was later reversed due to public outcry, in 2020 the same station said it would play the censored version of the song, while BBC Radio 2 vowed to keep playing the original.
The Pogues themselves released a new version of he song the same year where the words ‘you cheap lousy f****t’ were replaced with the more PG ‘you’re cheap and you’re haggard’.
Phil Riley, co-founder of Boom Radio, told the Telegraph: ‘These decisions are always challenging and each one must be taken in context.
‘Our audience of grown-ups recognise the potential for offence and that language and attitudes have moved on in their lifetimes.
‘In a sense, lyrics from the past actually illustrate the degree of welcome change. They are keen wherever justifiable to hear songs in their original form.’
The version that has reached the top of the iTunes chart and the upper echelons of the Spotify chart is the original, which includes the controversial lyrics.
MacGowan, 65, died at home in Dublin on Thursday surrounded by his family after developing pneumonia. He and Clarke married in Copenhagen in 2018 after being engaged for 11 years and in a relationship for decades.
He had been discharged from hospital just over a week before after undergoing months of treatment for viral encephalitis, a condition in which swelling develops on the brain.
The Pogues’ frontman Shane MacGowan with Kirsty MacColl, with whom he duetted on Fairytale of New York
MacGowan beams at The World nightclub in New York in February 1986
A candle burns next to a photograph of The Pogues frontman at the Mansion House, in Dublin, after a book of condolence was open by the city’s lord mayor following the singer’s death
His passing prompted an outpouring of tributes from across the globe and kick-started a renewed campaign to get Fairytale of New York to number one in the UK for the first time.
And on Friday, a poll by bookmakers Ladbrokes once again named the song as the UK’s favourite festive song of all time.
Bookies have slashed their odds on the song – a drunken dirge by an Irish immigrant in America as he reminisces about a former lover – reaching the top spot.
How are the Official Charts decided?
In 2014, the Official Charts began including audio streaming in the singles chart as sales fell out of favour with the rise of services such as Spotify.
In 2017, it overhauled the algorithm it uses to decide how many streams constitute the same value as a purchase of a single, based on whether people pay for their streaming.
From 12am Friday until 11.59pm on Thursday each week, the Official Charts count sales and streams from 8,000 sources – covering CDs, vinyls, cassettes and both downloads and streams of audio and video.
It counts 100 premium streams – by users who pay for Spotify Premium or other paid services – and 600 ‘free’ streams as one single ‘purchase’.
And everything from remixes to acoustic versions counts towards the chart entry for a single song.
It is odds-on favourite to be Christmas number one ahead of both competing festive tunes and hits by the likes of Taylor Swift.
Spotify chart data for November 29, the day before MacGowan died, shows the song was the 23rd most-streamed tune in the UK that day, being played 190,288 times.
But on November 30, as news of his passing came to light streams more than doubled to 390,657, and the song was Brits’ sixth most listened-to track that day.
It also notched up 694,571 listens on December 1, becoming the fourth most-played song on the platform.
Martin Talbot, CEO of Official Charts, said of the song: ‘It is a genuine contender for this year’s Christmas Number 1 – a chart position which this classic has never previously reached. What a fitting tribute to Shane that would be.’
Following his death, the creative director of a theatre show called Fairytale Of New York has redoubled efforts to get MacGowan’s best-known song to the top of the UK charts for the first time.
Ged Graham told the PA news agency that even though Fairytale Of New York has never topped the charts, it is the most-played Christmas song in the UK.
‘It’s a great Christmas story,’ he said. ‘It’s honest and it’s real, and honest and real music just lasts for eternity.
‘It’s not a jingle-belly, happy, happy Christmas. It’s a nitty-gritty, real-life story at Christmas. Everything at Christmas isn’t all nice and bells and whistles and loveliness, it’s got an earthiness and a great kind of vibe to it that just appeals to people, especially Irish people in the UK.
‘Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl… are just two real people. They don’t look like film stars, they don’t look like George Michael and Wham! My friends look like that.’
In the past, the lyrics have been changed for both live performances and radio play. Official Charts does not distinguish between versions when it collates sales data to decide the Official Top 40.
The results will be announced on the last Friday before Christmas, December 22, with sales and streams from the Friday before until 11.59pm on Thursday counted towards that week’s charts.
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