Even as he wrote a Christmas song, I can't imagine that Shane MacGowan believed he was writing a Christmas Song, something that you'd hear on one of those radio stations that starts playing holiday music 24/7 in November or in the background of one of a dozen interchangeable Hallmark holiday rom-coms. And yet, inexplicably, "Fairytale of New York," his ballad about a couple in a heated drunken argument in an NYPD jail cell on Christmas Eve, somehow did. You've heard it dozens of times as you've done your holiday shopping this year, nearly as inescapable as Mariah Carey.

I still remember the first time I heard it, smashed right up against the screamer "Bottle of Smoke," about betting on a longshot horse that wins, the fourth song on an album that up until then had not let up even for a second, and suddenly there's this lush, wistful duet. Shane's rough cigarette-scarred voice contrasted against Kirsty MacColl's perfect vocals is a magical pairing (that both Shane and Kristy are dead now makes listening to the original a little too haunting for me now). I had the Pogues' If I Should Fall From Grace With God on cassette and when the song ended I remember rewinding and re-listening immediately.

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