Fairytale Of New York

I think melodic trash is right about the song- it's one of the few songs that make me cry almost everytime I hear it- I see it as esplaining how life is genrally shit- it's only the other people that make it good- these two people may be in a bad place but at least they love each other, and thats all that matters...

how can you not love a christmas song where they hurl insults like 'slut' and 'faggot' at eachother.

merry christmas your arse = best line ever

When you see the ould couples in the ould pubs in the Irish ghettos who spend the night getting drunker and and giving each other hell yet going home together at the end of the night cos all they have is each other then you know you're where this was written.

I've always seen it as the song of a couple who start off remembering the past on Christmas Eve, then get into a long argument and scream at everyone how much they hate each other. Yet somehow, as the bells ring out for Christmas Day, they realise how much they depend on one another. He may be drunk and she may be cold, but their dreams still belong together. (I like the way the last verse seems to tie the two different melodies of the song together.)

The key is the last line of the first verse......"I turned my face away, and dreamed about you" The old man sings a sentimental song about whiskey and the drunk man has a dream....the dream takes place in the late 40's, early 50's, when he first met the girl of his dreams, who apparently was an Irish immigrant (she talks about NY as if she is hearing about it in Ireland before she comes.....Cars big as bars, rivers of gold, but a cold win, and no place for old people) In the dream, several things become clear, either he (also an Irish immigrant) talked her into coming to America ("you promised that Broadway was waiting for me"), or he was a NY Irishman who met her here and swept her off her feet on a Christmas eve when Sinatra was playing and everything was Magical.....They are also both now older and have serious drug problems (he, alcohol, she, heroin) ...they talk to each other like alcoholics....overly sentimental one moment, nasty insults the next.... It's possible they are still together, but I think it's not likely....I think she was the great love of his life, and he is dreaming that he is talking to her.....almost as if the two dying spirits are reconciling.....he never really stopped loving her in his drunken way....and it's not too late for them to reconcile somehow in the spirit world, with the grace of forgiveness that comes with Christmas....that Christmas eve memory being the great moment of their lives.... the "got on a lucky one" refernece means he hit it big at the track on an 18 to 1 horse, and took it to mean that he was on a roll, and that his luck would be good, and times would improve.....

this song made me cry the first time I heard it. It's so bittersweet, at the beginning it seems like they're just reminiscing about the good ol days when they first met, and as it goes on he's so hurt because he loves her so much, and he's so mad at her because her actions put her in that hospital bed and he's angry and scared because he "built his dreams around her."

Beautiful song, the music just reminds me of walking around at nighttime in the snow, while it's still so pretty out before the snow plows and cars ruin it.

this song for me was such an anti xmas song it was amazing...so many missed the point.nothing happy at all in it...now for me the song has changed meaning...now its for Kirsty and the justice for Kirsty...

Fairytale of New York was named after the novel of the same name, by J. P. Dunleavy, and Shane named the song after it was written. Both the book and the novel adress the same subject: New York's hollow dream and the emptyness that belies the showy lifestyle of its inhabitents. So yes, this is a love song, but it is much more than that, hence the line: 'They've got cars big as bars/They've got rivers of gold/But the wind goes right through you/It's no place for the old.' He promised this woman a paradise which never existed, and though they've lived to an old age they still blame themselves and eachother for the theft of a dream that will always be unattainable.

quiffporn,

she's not strung out on smack, she's lying on her deathbed in hospital. seriously, that is what it actually IS.

Yeah, Pharoah, I think you're wrong about the hospital bed. She's "an old slut on junk," a heroin addict.