“Fairytale of New York” is a drunken hymn for people with broken dreams and abandoned hopes. It is, therefore, a perfect contrast to some of the perkier perennial favourites we wheel out each Christmas.

The song begins with its narrator, an Irish immigrant, being thrown into a drunk tank to sleep off his Christmas Eve binge.

Hearing an old man sing the Irish ballad “The Rare Old Mountain Dew”, he begins to dream about his memories of the female character in the song, and so begins the story of two people who fell in love in America, only to see their plans of a bright future dashed.

Some of the best songs combine uplifting instrumentation with lyrics that are downright miserable, and such is the case for “Fairytale of New York”. It has none of the gooeyness of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” or Wham!’s “Last Christmas”.

Shane MacGowan’s slurring, bitter delivery of those opening vocals is played out over romanticised piano chords. Then to those wonderful, jaunty strings and Terry Woods’ mandolin.

MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl really get into their roles, and their call and response lyrics are brilliant, filled with sass. He calls her a slut and a junkie, she calls him a punk and a maggot… and there’s an underlying, albeit dark humour through it all. As it closes the chorus each time, you can picture the two characters staggering around the city, screeching at each other.

In 2007, Radio 1 removed the words “slut” and “faggot” from the song, backtracking when the move received criticism from the public and MacColl’s mother, who said censoring the words was “too ridiculous”. However, in recent years more radio stations have chosen to play a censored version, mostly due to the homophobic context of the word “faggot”.

There are differing views on how “Fairytale of New York” came to be. MacGowan, who was born on Christmas Day in 1957, claimed that Elvis Costello bet him that he wouldn’t be able to write a Christmas duet to sing with bass player Cait O’Riordan (Costello’s future wife).

Accordion player James Fearnley claimed that their manager Frank Murray suggested they cover the Band’s 1977 song “Christmas Must be Tonight”.

“It was an awful song,” Fearnley writes in his memoir Here Comes Everybody: The Story of The Pogues. “We probably said. ‘F**k that, we’ll do our own.’”

It took more than two years to perfect, and was recorded, oddly, in the sweltering heat of July 1987, at RAK Studios near Regent’s Park in London. The original plan to record with O’Riordan fell through when she married Costello and left the band. Costello was replaced with Steve Lillywhite, who brought in his wife (MacColl) to record the test vocals so they could see how the duet would work. They were so astounded by her performance, however, that they had to keep it.

The title was chosen after the song had been written and recorded, lifted from the title of Irish American author JP Donleavy’s novel A Fairy Tale of New York. The book’s main character, Cornelius Christian, refers to New York as “the city that is too rich to laugh at and too lonely and too ruthless to love and where happiness is a big cat with a mouse on a square mile of linoleum”.

The video is as much part of the song as the music itself; Kirsty MacColl leaning nonchalantly over the piano and telling Shane MacGowan how useless he is. It was decided that he would sit there instead of Fearnley, who said that he was “humiliated”, particularly when he had to wear MacGowan’s rings for the close-up shots of his hands.

A young Matt Dillon stars as the cop who has to arrest MacGowan – he was already a big fan of The Pogues and reportedly so nervous about manhandling him in the scene that MacGowan snapped: “Just kick the s**t out of me and throw me in the cell and then we can be warm!”

The song provided a launching pad for the mainstream success of both The Pogues and MacColl, the latter of whom had ambitions of being a pop star but was crippled by severe stage fright. The song never made it to the Christmas number one spot in the UK, but remains one of the most popular festive songs of all time.

This article was originally published in 2017

Mona

Shani Diluka has many firsts to her credit. A Sri Lankan born in Monaco, she is the first ever artiste from the Indian subcontinent to get into Conservatoire de Paris, first to enter the prestigious Lake Como International Piano Academy, she is signed by the prestigious label Warner Classics as an exclusive artiste. Currently, one of the greatest pianists of her generation, Shani is knighted by France and Monaco!

Trained under the masters, Shani feels fortunate for the position she is in, and finds it her responsibility to share all the knowledge she has gathered over the decades.

In Chandigarh, on Thursday, for a concert organised by the French Embassy in India, Institut Français, Alliance Française de Chandigarh, the Chandigarh Cultural Department and Furtados, the piano virtuoso opens up on high-flying life.

Born to Sri Lankan parents, Shani was spotted as a music protege at the age of five under a programme set up by Princess Grace of Monaco to promote classical arts in her country. Each year music specialists visit kindergarten schools to find child prodigies on the basis of a series of tests over rhythm and melody. Her parents were reluctant as they wanted her to pursue academics but relented. After a year of exposure to all musical instruments, Shani found her calling in the piano!

Her training started right then, practising the piano after school, waking up early to keep up with academics. In fact, she barely slept. At 12, she was offered to pursue music in New York full time, but Shani and her parents opted out of it.

“I lived in Monte Carlo, Monaco, but my family was in Sri Lanka. It was hard for me to fathom how these two distinct worlds existed on the same planet. Education helped me make sense of it, while music became my identity,” says Shani.

Music was to continue for life, as Shani got into Paris Conservatory followed by training under masters at Vienna, Austria and Lake Como International Piano Academy. Calling Paris home now, for about 20 years, Shani travels the world – holding master classes and performing.

“I realised power of music early on. I played for my family, who were never exposed to western classics and responded positively to it. Music is the universal language of love and peace.”

Shani’s love for Indian classical music is as intense. “I have listened to Pandit Ravi Shankar extensively. While the construct is different, I feel western and Indian classical are quite similar.

In fact, when signed by Warner Classics, her first record was Cosmos: Beethoven & Indian Ragas. “Now, who would have guessed that Beethoven was interested in Upanishads? In his quest he was captivated by the translation of the Upanishads that was published in Germany in 1816.”

The piano hasn’t been an easy choice for Shani. For every new place, every new country she finds a new piece. “It’s like meeting a new friend each time. In some regions like India and Sri Lanka, due to humidity and other factors, it’s difficult to find a good piano. But for me this is an experience of meting someone new that I cherish.”

A regular in India, she often comes for master classes at Zubin Mehta Foundation. Shani has read Tagore extensively and is happy to perform at Tagore Theatre. Her performances take her all over the world.

“I am almost always on the move. It does get hectic adjusting to different scenarios. The temperature in Sri Lanka was 28 degree C, in Chandigarh it’s 14 and I will be going to Germany where it will be -2 degree. I find my energy from the performances and the joy that music brings to people!”