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Radio 2 switches to censored version of Fairytale Of New York this Christmas
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 2 December 2022
BBC Radio 2 has this year, for the first time, joined the group of radio stations that have decided to play an edited version of ‘Fairytale Of New York’, the popular festive classic from The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl.
There has been increasing controversy around the inclusion of the word ‘faggot’ in the lyrics of the song in recent years.
On one side, there are people who think that a homophobic slur such as that shouldn’t really be heard on daytime radio in this day and age – regardless of whether or not it’s delivered as the words of an unsympathetic character within the context of the song.
On the other side, there are those who think it’s been in the song for years now and people are just being overly sensitive – given that it’s delivered as the words of an unsympathetic character within the context of the song.
Anyway, we have this conversation every year, even though everyone involved seems to have agreed that the song should be edited and the original should not be played on the radio anymore. Last year people got upset because Warner Music created a new radio edit, which replaced the line “you cheap lousy faggot” with “you’re cheap and you’re haggard”.
The new line was lifted from a live performance by Kirsty MacColl, who herself had begun censoring the song before her death in 2000. You’d think people might be happy with that, given that it’s less disruptive to the song than simply cutting or bleeping the offending word. It seems like a reasonable compromise. People who complain about this sort of thing tend not to like reasonable compromises though, do they?
Anyway, last year the BBC decided that Radio 1 would air the updated version, while Radio 2 would play the original – deeming that its older listeners would be more likely to realise the context in which the word was delivered, or just really like hearing homophobic slurs in the run-up to Christmas.
But this year, Radio 2 will join Radio 1 in playing the censored version, as it turned out that the assumptions the BBC made about its listeners last year weren’t entirely correct.
“On Radio 2 we are reflecting what we are hearing back from many of our listeners who love the song, but find some of the lyrics jarring in 2022, and playing an alternative version provided by the record company,” a spokesperson tells the Huffington Post. “We know the song is considered a Christmas classic and will continue to play it this year, with our radio stations choosing the version of the song most relevant for their audience”.
We know that Kirsty MacColl began changing the lyrics of the song more than 20 years ago, and more recently Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan also agreed – albeit reluctantly – that it would probably be better to stop playing the original version of the song.
“The word was used by the character because it fitted with the way she would speak and with her character”, he said in 2018. “She is not supposed to be a nice person, or even a wholesome person. She is a woman of a certain generation at a certain time in history and she is down on her luck and desperate”.
“Her dialogue is as accurate as I could make it but she is not intended to offend”, he went on. “She is just supposed to be an authentic character and not all characters in songs and stories are angels or even decent and respectable. Sometimes characters in songs and stories have to be evil or nasty in order to tell the story effectively”.
“If people don’t understand that I was trying to accurately portray the character as authentically as possible then I am absolutely fine with them bleeping the word, but I don’t want to get into an argument”, he concluded.
MacGowan said all that four years ago. He was happy with it being bleeped. And now we have the updated version where the change maintains the spirit of the original version of the song and is basically imperceptible. The original still exists, and you can sing whatever words you like over the top of any version. Merry Christmas.
