Cover Story (32): Fairytale of New York. The Pogues but also O'Hooley & Tidow and now Eliza Carthy & Jon Boden in extraordinary remakes
December 21, 2023
Dec 2023: a further update. We've had a bit of Martin Carthy lately, a review of his talking/singing tour and a look back at his version, with Dave Swarbrick, of Byker Hill.
But there's also Eliza Cartthy, Martin's daughter of course, and she has also been on tour, with Jon Boden of Bellowhead renown.
Since we're all inclined just now to laud Shane MacGowan's lofty talents in the aftermath of his recent death let Salut! Live resurrect this item dealing with a highly unusual cover of Fairytale. The update is that Eliza and Jon have also been performing their own interpretation, to great acclaim, on their tour.
'We are both big fans of Shane MacGowan’s work and (like everyone) felt bereft at his recent passing,' says the YouTube note accompanying a clip of the song, which they call Glad Christmas Comes.
'Eliza met him a couple of times and he was lovely. We have loved singing this song on stage on the tour - so ubiquitous and yet constantly surprising. Surely the edgiest Christmas hit of all time. RIP Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl - Eliza & Jon.’
Scroll down to the end for the clip...
A troubled journey from London to the south Midlands was made slightly grimmer by my daughter's choice of a radio station which had decided that the afternoon of December 2 was a good time to bombard listeners with Christmas hits, all the usual suspects.
When, early in the journey, the Pogues duly arrived as Pogues do, I forgot to listen carefully to discover whether the absurd BBC bowdlerisation of Fairytale of New York had spread to commercial stations. But I did reflect on O'Hooley and Tidow's quite remarkable remake of the song, first discussed here in 2017, and thought to myself, "would I still like it?". I do.
So if radio can do it, so shall I. I have chosen a different clip, a version recorded live at the Kitchen Garden Café in Kings Heath, Birmingham two years ago.
Otherwise, what follows is simply a seasonal refresher especially aimed at those readers new to this site. The full Cover Story series - same songs, different ways of performing them and now stretching to 50 instalments - can be found at this link.. One other update: I counted around 30,000 YouTube views for O'Hooley and Tidow's various versions (edging ever closer to the 100m clocked up by just the first three Pogues clips I spotted)
Roll up for the 32nd instalment in my series Cover Story, which looks at different versions of the same songs ...
Why am I even bothering with Fairytale of New York? As good a Christmas song as you'll encounter, a stirring melody and chorus plus Shane MacGowan's eloquent portrayal of being down and out in NYC, executed with punch and panache by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. Nothing, on the face if it, to dislike.
But it has been done to death by excessive airplay and as many people now cringe as cry for joy when it comes on yet again. Yet there is a good reason for my interest to perk up, a new interpretation that deserves serious attention.
Belinda O'Hooley first came to my notice as part of the marvellous Tyneside band, the Unthanks.
Look them up in the search box at this site and you'll come across an extended interview with Rachel U plus lots of complimentary mentions, long before the mainstream media began to catch up.
I remember a sense of disappointment when O'Hooley left the band as I thought she added a lot. But life goes on. O'Hooley - and I must get as many reference to O' into this piece as possible to make up for initially omitting it from my reference to her when introducing Bill Taylor's look at Christmas songs - now plays in a duo with a fellow Yorkshire-Irish singer and musician, Heidi Tidow, who also happens to be her partner.
They have released a rather unusual Christmas album, WinterFolk Volume 1 and it includes a sumptuous reworking of Fairytale. I cannot comment on the rest save to say that it covers subjects of seasonal significance but bleaker than midwinter weather: domestic violence, the absence or loss of children, global warming, poverty, religion, migration and loneliness.
"The Mount Everest of Christmas songs," they say themselves of the attempt to wrest ownership of MacGowan's song from him, his band and the late MacColl's legacy. "Were we mad to cover it?"
In honesty, I did fear they'd run into trouble in the Nepalese foothills, let alone when trying to scale the more challenging heights.
I need not have worried. O'Hooley's piano accompaniment is perfect; the harmonies are divine.
Not all will agree with me but I feel the mountain has been conquered.
As I write, all of 623 people have looked up the O'Hooley/Tidow YouTube clip, some way behind the 54m for the first two listed videos of the original, and I do not expect the gap to narrow enormously as a result of my approval.
And since no one ever goes from these articles to the Salut! Live Amazon link, why not - if you like the version enough to feel inclined to buy the album
- do so at the duo's own site?
And now for the Eliza Carth/Jon Boden version:
As you say, it's been played and played to the point where I find it hard to listen to any more. But I'd still far rather listen to the Pogues' original, with all its rough edges, than this smoothed-out easy-listening version. Postmodern Muzak.
As for the song itself, far from being an "eloquent portrayal of being down and out in NYC," it was an artificial construct, recorded (according to the NME) in the heat of summer after a bet with Elvis Costello that Shane MacGowan and Pogues banjo-player Jem Finer couldn't write a "non-slushy" Christmas song.
Non-slushy it might be but it's still saturated with sentiment and cliché - the broken dreams, the old Irish sot singing in the drunk-tank, the "boys from the NYPD choir still singing Galway Bay." Slightly less obvious than Danny Boy, I suppose.
The New York Police Department doesn't actually have a choir. And when the Pogues recruited the NYPD pipe band to play on the video, they didn't even know Galway Bay and instead played the Mickey Mouse Club March (the video was apparently slowed down later to match the beat).
All in all, a bit of a con really. Like most Christmas music.
Posted by: Bill Taylor | December 02, 2020 at 10:53 PM
That’s Bill now, citing the Joubert defence for the comprehensive change of heart since he posted this comment about the same duo’s version in 2017: ” Sumptuous, gorgeous but well-nigh impossible to compare with the original. O'Hooley & Tidow turn it into a completely different song; half of the lyrics and all of the conflict and raw-edged... New Yorkness, for want of a better term, are gone. It's not so much that they've conquered Everest as made it to the summit of another peak, equally as high and challenging. Mount Chalk and Mount Cheese.“
Don’t blame him for the mountain analogy. I started it ... https://www.salutlive.com/2017/12/cover-story-32-fairytale-of-newnyork-city-the-pogues-or-ohooley-and-tidow.html
Posted by: Colin Randall | December 03, 2020 at 12:03 AM
"I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now..."
Posted by: Bill Taylor | December 03, 2020 at 02:05 PM