This 1987 recording is the most-played Christmas song of the 21st century in the UK, and it’s pretty popular on these shores, too, though I’ll never understand why. Not why it’s popular — it’s a great song, a pungent character study of addiction and co-dependence written with an economy that would do O. Henry proud. I just don’t see what connection it has to Christmas beyond its scene-setting use of the holiday as a source of extra bathos, which IMO pushes it over the border from moving to maudlin.
The song took a long time to come together — Jeremy Finer and Shane MacGowan started working on it in 1985, when then-producer Elvis Costello challenged the Irish punks to come up with a hit Christmas single. Finer wrote two tunes and gave them to MacGowan, who put the better story together with the better tune, gave it what Finer called a “Broadway melody” and titled it after the J.P. Donleavy novel Finer was reading at the time. He rewrote the lyrics the next year after his first visit to New York and the USA.
When the band first tried recording the song, bassist Cait O’Riordan sang the female part, but after she ran off with Costello, who departed as producer, new helmsman Steve Lillywhite stealthily gave the job to his wife, Kristy MacColl, whose demo “guide track” sealed the deal.
The video features a young Matt Dillon, a friend of the band, as the cop; he apparently was the only one sober during filming. That included the members of the NYPD Pipes and Drums — there is no “NYPD choir.” Manager Frank Murray said the cops drank on the bus on the way to the video shoot and arrived more drunk than the band. They refused to work unless they were supplied with more alcohol, and it turned out they didn’t know either of the songs known as “Galway Bay.” They sang instead the Mickey Mouse March.
I suppose I should have included a trigger warning — the BBC, for one, censors MacColl’s vicious line that includes the f-word and, worse in their eyes, “arse” (one bowdlerization actually substituted “ass,” which is considered less offensive across the pond).
The song made No. 2 on the UK Christmas singles chart when it was released in 1987, but it has been in the Top 20 every year since its second re-release in 2005. It’s also been much covered over the years, but it’s hard to top the original.
This performance from Chris Thile’s Live From Here radio show in 2017 is one of the better versions I found on YouTube. The three-part harmony by the Staves really makes it pop.
