I had also never heard this song before today… but I just chalk that up to cultural differences; in 1988 I was 13, and listening to the likes of New Edition.
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Seeing as how this song gets played repeatedly every Christmas, and has been for twenty years, I find it hard to believe anybody in the western world could have missed it! Stars do a very good cover of it as well.
Yeah, it’s nothing like what I listened to back then either. My dislike is more linked to working in bars over Christmas and hearing it on a loop many, many times a day for weeks on end.
That, and drunk people always think they can sing it. Spoiler: they can’t.
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Hate to harsh your mellow even further, but 1988 was 30 years ago.
That’s a helluva biased assumption.
Any one person’s lived experiences are often going to vary greatly from any other person’s; no one is the “center of the universe,” (although many folks seem to be under that erroneous misperception.)
This song doesn’t ‘get played every Xmas where I live,’ amongst my particular demographic.
So yeah… I’d never heard it.
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The Pogues weren’t exactly mainstream artists here in the states… also people have been born between the time that album came out and now…
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Obligatory xkcd:
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Weirdly, this song was never played on the radio where I lived, and I had zero exposure to it throughout the 90s, but it’s a staple on the radio in Boston and gets played all the time. I’ve occasionally heard it in stores while Christmas shopping but I imagine the “f-word” gets it kept off of most store’s playlists. In any case I’m tremendously familiar with it as of the past 15 years.
I deeply love the version from A Very Murray Christmas (sung mostly by David Johanson),
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I never heard it growing up either, at least not until I started tuning into the college station in ATL… but I totally am not surprised it plays in Boston at all.
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Just an FYI for UK fans, there is an hour-long documentary about this song at 23:30 on BBC4 tonight, which means it may be on iPlayer.
(I still hate this song but I am being nice today.)
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Yeah, thanks for that.
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Feel my pain.
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I’ll presume you’re an expert on Kirsty MacColl, then: do you know what the outcome was in the determination of the individual responsible for her death?
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Gay and Irish American, and raised on the Pogues. I cringe every time I hear that line, but I love this band and this song. It’s completely legible to me as a means to evoke people of a certain culture and situation, and nothing more.
But to hear it also reminds me that this word, and most of the words in “Mark Twain territory” are still very much in use for their original purposes, and not just museum pieces.
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I heard it at every party I went to from High School through university, but only incidental to it being on a Pogues album. I didn’t hear it on the radio till maybe ten years ago.
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Surprised at the reaction to the 'F" word in this song, being from Liverpool (a Scouser), I know the origins as an Irish and Scouse word meaning ‘lazy person’. The shortened version is also slang for cigarette, so if you’re in England and someone says they are going outside for a ‘F’ they mean for a smoke (it is against the law to smoke inside any public building in the UK).
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Is that Paul Shaffer on the piano?
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Last thing I heard, her family was nearing bankruptcy in the efforts to get some justice.
Horrible story, all in all: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/dec/11/kirsty-maccoll-campaign-anniversary-death
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The very same! It’s a very unique Christmas special, to be sure.
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I was mildly disappointed they left out all the sweary bits.
Horrible indeed. Interesting the Guardian story was filed on dec 11 2009, but Carlos González Nova died in Aug of 2009. The article was written as if he were still alive at the time.
