This is a very excellent point - my husband and I are both of Irish ancestry, and he plays a great deal of traditional Irish music on his fiddle. When he explains to me what the songs are about I’m often taken aback because they do sound so cheerful. So maybe in a sense I’ve trained my ear to listen to the music as opposed to analyze the lyrics. Food for thought.
FTR, NDP, I’m not British and I found this statement pretty offensive as well.
A Irish(well English from Irish stock) singer brought down by drink? Say it aint so! 
We’re used to it over here. Sad but nothing new.
<fingers crossed> Thinks of Westlife </fingers crossed>
The lyrics tell a depressing story, in contrast to their wistful delivery, the bouncy Irish melody, and soaring musical arrangement. So as a complete work I’d call the song melancholy or bittersweet.
A similar thing is going on with “Mr. Grinch”; the lyrics are little more than a series of complicated insults, but the playful tune and childlike, “Seussian” delivery combine with this to make the song amusing and endearing.
Yep, that’s right.
Brought a tear to my eye…
I wouldn’t call it depressing exactly. Bittersweet, sad, and heartbreaking all work, but depressing isn’t exactly right for me. It’s a drunk’s memory of a happier time and how it fell apart, but no memory that happy could really be depressing. I don’t exactly get hope from the final lines either, but something more akin to beauty in the way that even lost love is beautiful. Her final lines to him don’t seem to have much anger in them (and thus maybe not much love left either), but more like regret mixed with pity. His final lines to her to me say “but you know, in spite of everything we’ve said and everything that’s happened, I really, really did love you,” excpet in a much more heartbreaking and eloquent way (I sometimes tear up just thinking about it, must be the Irish in me).
I don’t know that she didn’t respond so much as the song just ends there beacuse that’s where the story naturally ended, but I suspect she doesn’t just run into his arms again. I don’t get so much hope from the end song as a sense of beauty from just the memory of love, even if it’s a love that’s gone forever. Christ, I need a drink now! Is it noon yet?
I apologize for the statement. It was rather mean and churlish. As someone whose own family tree reaches into both England and Ireland, I should’ve known better to make a comment like that. (BTW, I do like the song.)
Well the music of the main part of the song is pretty upbeat and happy. I’ve got a cd,* well actually I bought a collection of files that once appeared together on a CD but I have no idea what to call them,* of Irish Drinking songs. It seems to me, that in general, musically speaking, the Irish don’t seem to seperate happy from sad. Like ying and yang, they are forever connected to each other. You can’t have one without the other.
Me getting poked in the eye, not funny.
Curly getting poked in the eye by Moe, funny.
If I viewed the song from the singers’ perspective, it would be a downer. As an outside observer, I think it’s pretty neat. Especially the line about the NYPD choir. Isn’t it ironic…
The Pogues popularised that, but it was written by Eric Bogle (IIRC).
I can confirm that in Britain and Ireland this is not only a hugely popular Christmas song, but it’s a singalong one - as in, people have listened to the lyrics, because many people know them and sing them, each and every one.
The fact that the guy has put her dreams with his own is the only positive note in the whole song. But it’s still a superb Christmas song: melancholy is a good, Dickensian emotion.
(NDP, that was an ill-informed statement there: the song is as popular in Ireland as it is over here, and most of my countrymen count the Irish as “of us”, even though they’re not.)
I just bought my girlfriend a copy of this on vinyl for christmas. I hope she doesn’t find it depressing! There was a commentary in The Guardian UK today about the song. Read it here. The commentator says that if they don’t censor the word faggot then why do they censor racist and other offensive epithets?
Anyway, I’m gonna enjoy this song, and hope there’s a better time when all our dreams come true.
Glad to see Mr Tatchell has retained his sense of proportion there.
Though I still admire him for fronting up to Mugabe when our leaders wimped out.
I’ll probably get banned for this, but I actually prefer “No Use For a Name’s” cover of this to the original. Anyone else?
Here’s the best I can find of their version. It’s a bunch of…umm…I don’t want to say retards, but yeah, retards pretending to sing along to the song. But it is No Use For a Name’s actual song, if not actual video. So just close your eyes and listen.
Um. No.
Anyhow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a good cover of this song. I rather think it’s impossible to top and, unless you have a really interesting radically different version of the song, don’t even bother trying. If you’re going into it trying to sound at all like Shane McGowan, I don’t want to hear it.
Geez-O-Pete. I was already depressed. Now after watching the video and reading the lyrics, I want to cut my wrists*. (How have I been lucky enough to have never heard this song before?)
*I don’t.
Wow, we must really interpret that line differently, because I see it as the bleakest line in the song - not only has he driven away the things he dreamed of through his actions, he’s put her dreams out of reach too.
I don’t like this song, mostly because I can’t stand his voice, but I don’t think it’s terribly depressing. The characters in the song are both too unpleasant to feel much for them.
Christy Moore’s interpretation is pretty good - a balladic style, rather than raw, just him and a guitar - and he deliberately rewrote a couple of lines to make them nastier: “You’re a bum, you’re a punk/you’re an auld whore on junk… Happy Christmas me arse/I pray God it’s our last”. I believe he and Shane have sung it together live, too, so it’s got McGowan’s approval.
I can’t really think of a way this song could be successfully covered because it seems so closely tied to both Kirsty MacColl and (especially) McGowan. Any female singer doing it would just be putting herself in the uncomfortable position of being compared with MacColl and whoever does the male portion will have the near impossible task of trying to avoid impersonating McGowan. Maybe someone like Tom Waits could get away with doing McGowan part but even then you lose the whole “immigrants in America” aspect of the song.
I’m not going to defend what I said because I admit the comment was dead wrong. It was a failed attempt to make a cynical sideswipe that, in retrospect, would’ve been out of bounds in the Pit.
Oh, I posted this before I read your last comment about other versions. I haven’t heard the one with Christy Moore so I could be wrong.
I can certainly understand how one would hear it as a bleak song, but to me, the last verse takes it out of the realm of tragedy:
I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
OK, yeah, still depressing.
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Now we’re getting somewhere. It’s an affirmation of his commitment to her: Her dreams are as important to him as his own. Sure, he’s a drunken deadbeat who’s spending Christmas Eve in the drunk tank, but he’s still got his dreams held somewhere personal and private, and her dreams are there too. Her dream of becoming a world-famous veterinarian (or whatever) is as dear to him as his own dream of becoming the world’s greatest mime (or whatever).
Can’t make it all alone
I’ve built my dreams around you.
This line brings it all home. Sure, their lives are massively fucked up, but they have each other; he’s acknowledging that whatever semblance of a life they manage to carry on is due to her presence in his life. I find this a far more honest (and therefore thrilling) expression of love than anything contained in “White Christmas.”
A friend of mine got married in October. At the reception, he pulled out a guitar and sang this song to his wife. It was brilliant (though I’m not sure the older generation quite understood why the groom was singing a song with “slut” and “faggot” in it).