Amusing anecdotes & random ramblings
Posts tagged FairytaleofNewYork
Where's the Fairytale of New York?
Dec 5th
Update: Heard it on 6 December. Hurrah. Christmas can now officially start!
Despite having spent the last three days trotting around all the shopping centres that Manchester and Cheshire have to offer – in the hunt for a new pair of spectacles actually! – and spending countless hours on shopping websites, I still don’t quite feel that Christmassy.
It’s partly because I’m still a bit ill so instead of rich mince pies I’m mostly craving plain jacket potatoes – and half-dreading the 12-hour drink fest that is the annual works Christmas party this weekend with special mystery guest star.
But it’s mostly because despite all the driving around and listening to the radio at work all day, I still haven’t yet heard The Fairytale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. The definitive bitter-sweet Christmas tune, and one that never fails to give me Christmassy memories, such as snow falling on an American car park. Ahhh, snow, where have you gone?
Has it been taken off mainstream UK radio? Has it now been deemed too unChristmassy? Is there a mass conspiracy behind its’ disappearance off UK Radio? Or is it just me?
Can't we just cancel Christmas?
Dec 9th
Sorry to go on about this, but I really think it’d be better all round if we all postponed Christmas. Just by a week or so, just to give me a little more time.
The washing-up has been piling up alongside the laundry, simply because I need to get the international Christmas cards and presents out by Monday and get most of my family presents out of the way by Saturday.
My impending sense of panic and doom is, however, not helped by the terrible Christmas music that the shops and supermarkets are inflicting on my poor ears in an attempt to get me into the festive spirit.
Wizzard’s bloody cliched Christmas song kept stalking me the other day down the high street as I went into shop after shop in a vain attempt to find a suitable present. And then on the drive home, it came on again – from a caller who wanted that song instead of a sweet Christmas carol. Which is at least more calming after a long hour spent gazing at things that nobody could possibly want. Anyone who wishes it could be Christmas every day needs their bloody head examined.
In the meantime, VH1 are asking for your favourite Christmas song. Please let it be the superlative Fairytale of New York (being re-released this Christmas apparently). Let it be Dear Jessie. Let it be Always On My Mind. Let it be anything but that bloody Slade song.
First signs of Christmas
Oct 31st
Joining in on blog cliche no.173, the first ugly sign of Christmas reared itself into my ordinary life today when, having a coffee at a train station waiting with someone, the music playing was a cover version of Silent Night.
For goodness’ sake, Halloween isn’t even over yet.
I had a false start earlier this month when I heard the best Christmas song of all time – Fairytale of New York (a song which has on occasion brought a moistening of my eye, depending on how drunk I am) was playing on Radio 1 in mid-October, but fortunately, it turned out to be a “Identify this song” moment in a music quiz of some kind.
And so far this year, I’ve yet to decide where to go on holiday, let alone Christmas. Although flights to San Francisco for November are now a bargain £170 on British Airways, apparently.
Ronan Keating ruined my Christmas mood
Dec 7th
There I was, getting ready for a day of being Birthday’ed/Christmas’ed/whatever. I’d had a good night’s sleep, had a vague list in my head – although I didn’t check it twice.
I got my haircut. I even bought some tinsel to go along with my first ever Christmas tree (thank you Nia!) and some icicle lights to dangle over my balcony. So now the whole of Cardiff City Centre can see how tacky and sentimental I’ve gotten.
However, all that gets ruined when I hear, in some shop somewhere, Ronan Keating and Maire Brennan’s terrible cover version of Fairytale of New York (which has apparently been around since November 2000)
Now I loved the original version with Kirsty MacColl and Shane McGowan. It had the right edge of yearning, sentimentality, hope, despair, blackness and venom. Plus it was the right side of Irish.
This cover version Guinesses’s ups the Irish accent, to the point when I half expect amateur actors to be singing it at all Callaghan’s pubs. And of course, they change the lyrics to replace “you cheap lousy faggot” to “you’re cheap and you’re haggard.” – the same song that even US radio seems to play fine without any lyrical changes.
Grrrr. Anyway, time to compile my Christmas / December hits CD. So there’s that, Pet Shop Boys’ Always On My Mind, The Farm’s All Together Now, and Soul II Soul’s Get A Life. What else is there?