The lyrics to “Fairy Tale of New York” are only half the story of this song.

What comes across most strongly in the lyrics are the elements of despair, bitterness and frustrated rage and some people never see beyond that. My partner for example cannot stand the song, she just finds it depressing – maybe because it reminds her of some of the very difficult times we have been through in the past when I was a raging drunkard too.

That’s an indicator of the power of the song – it raises emotions, sometimes painful. It’s not entertainment, not easy listening, even if it does get trolleyed into the radio playlists every Xmas.

In fact reading the lyrics alone can be a shock. But to hear the song, to hear the entirety of those words together with the music with its uplifts and sense of release, the interplay of voices which mirror the struggles in the song in their contrast of McGowan’s broken craggy age-old rasp and MacColl’s soaring rich tones, the song itself contains such joy and optimism despite everything that we are told has happened between them.

The choir is singing of Galway, of Home, welcome even if they are the cops, and the Bells are ringing out… the Xmas bells, symbols of joy and celebration. They are heard even in the NYPD drunk tank.

What a song.

How does McGowan do it? Well, he’s a story-teller. It’s part of his heritage and part of his upbringing, the times he spent in rural Ireland. A living tradition. He lets the words tell the story in the gaps. You hear what these people say as the teller thinks back in his cell and you fill in the rest. Absolutely masterful story telling and perfectly matched by the performance of the Pogues and MacColl.

Transformed into something beyond itself. Now that is Art.

I’m not sure if McGowan would use the word but it is Art – Art with a capital A and the eternal Craft of the Bard.