Back in the far-off days of analogue, the No 1 slot in the British pop charts was much more than a musical milestone. It also served as a kind of entrance to the national cultural memory. It’s why, when I think of the long, hot summer of 1976, for example, it’s inseparable from the interminable sound of Elton John and Kiki Dee’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, which stayed in the top spot for the whole of July and beyond, forever on the radio.
The No 1 No 1 slot, so to speak, was not in summer, but at Christmastime, when record sales were highest as a result of present buying. I can recall Christmas 1981 quite vividly when I randomly hear the Human League’s Don’t You Want Me. Most Christmas No 1s were dreadful, especially if they were about Christmas, such as Shakin’ Stevens Merry Christmas Everyone or Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine.
It’s typical that the best pop song about Christmas ever written in the UK, the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York, only reached No 2 when it was released in December 1987. At that time, almost everyone in the nation knew what was No 1 on any given week. Nowadays, when most of us carry around a vast library of songs on our phones, hardly anyone takes any notice.
Yet there is a good chance that, 36 years after its first outing, Fairytale of New York will finally reach the top of the charts, driven there on a wave of sadness and sentimentality following the death last month of its lyricist, Shane MacGowan. That he made it to the age of 65, before succumbing to pneumonia, was itself a notable achievement.
I interviewed him (in a bar) at the turn of the century, when his alcoholism was long established, and he had also been rumoured to be having treatment for heroin addiction. He was such a talented songwriter, greatly admired by more established figures such as Bruce Springsteen, Bono and Nick Cave, that it pained me to see him in such a miserable condition, particularly as it was romanticised by many of his hangers-on.
At the time, he was in dispute with Sinéad O’Connor, who had tried to shame him into action by going public with his heroin use. Like many who met him, she cared deeply about his wellbeing, certainly much more than he seemed to care for himself.
The two of them were among the most gifted of the London-based Irish diaspora, with O’Connor’s smash-hit cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U making it to No 1 in 1990 across much of the world. After many years of struggling with fame, and then losing her son to suicide last year, she died at her home in South London in July.
That both these extraordinary characters, whose Irishness was boldly modern yet ingrained with some of that country’s oldest and most stubborn myths, are no longer here is a melancholy turn of events, to say the very least.
It’s hard not to lament their luck and some of their decision making, and yet they burnt far more brightly in their foreshortened lives than most of us would manage in 10. I wonder what MacGowan would have made of the fact that his funeral was live-streamed in the UK, a nation about which he had mixed feelings.
I don’t know, but as the temperature drops, and the nights grow longer, I’ve started to hear snatches of Fairytale of New York drifting on the chill December air.
It must be the cold wind in my face, because sometimes I have to wipe away a tear or two. I do hope Fairytale of New York finally makes it to No 1 this Christmas.
