Friday, December 24, 2010

The Story of a Fairytale

The Story of... Fairytale of New York, a BBC program on the song "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. Widely regarded as one of the best non-traditional Christmas songs, the song was written by Shane MacGowan and Jem Finer. The song is also notable for it's censorship due to a couple of words. While I wouldn't use the words myself and their meaning differs based on context, they add gritty realism to the "dialog" between the song's subjects. Here are the lyrics from pogues.com.

I like documentaries and especially those that are music-related, so I found the story interesting. The scenes are below, in order.

Part 1 (Introduction), Part 2 (The Pogues first American tour, Elvis Costello), Part 3 (Steve Lillywhite (producer), Kirsty MacCoil), Part 3 (Music video, Matt Dillon, BBC Top of the Pops), Part 4 (Song deconstruction with music experts, Once Upon a Time in America, Irish Americans), Part 5 (Shane on the ending, notable cover versions, censorship, Kirsty MacColl's death and memorial).

The film includes commentary by Steve Lillywhite, Matt Dillon, Nick Cave, Shane MacGowan, Jem Finer and The Pogues.











No comments: