The Anglo-Irish Celtic punk band the Pogues have recorded songs for seven studio albums as well as one extended play (EP), twenty singles, and various other projects. Having played together occasionally since the late 1970s, Shane MacGowan (vocals), Peter "Spider" Stacy (tin whistle), and Jem Finer (banjo) formed the band in 1982 along with James Fearnley (accordion), initially under the name Pogue Mahone, an anglicisation of the Irish phrase póg mo thóin , meaning "kiss my arse". [1] [2] Cait O'Riordan (bass guitar) and Andrew Ranken (drums) had joined by the time of the band's debut album, Red Roses for Me (1984). [3] The album mixed the band's interpretations of traditional British and Irish folk songs such as "Poor Paddy Works on the Railway" and "Greenland Whale Fisheries" with original tracks written by MacGowan, [4] [2] which centred primarily on drinking culture, the darker side of London society, and the experiences of Irish emigrants. [5] [6] [7] The band's second album, Rum Sodomy & the Lash (1985), continued such themes on tracks such as "The Old Main Drag", which depicts a teenager arriving in London and descending into addiction and sex work, [8] and also included cover versions of songs by the folk singers Ewan MacColl and Eric Bogle. [5]
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If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988) incorporated a wider range of musical styles, including Turkish and Spanish influences on the tracks "Turkish Song of the Damned" and "Fiesta", respectively, and songs written by newer band members Philip Chevron and Terry Woods. [9] The album also included the song "Fairytale of New York", originally envisaged as a duet between MacGowan and O'Riordan but eventually recorded with Kirsty MacColl after O'Riordan left the band in 1986. [10] The song reached number 2 in the UK singles chart [11] and has come to be regarded as a Christmas classic, regularly placing highly in polls of the greatest seasonal songs of all time. [12] [13] [14] The track "Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six", from the same album, proved controversial for its lyrical support of the Birmingham Six, a group of Irishmen imprisoned for terrorism offences in relation to the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. [15] [16] MacGowan's role in songwriting within the band continued to reduce with their fourth album, Peace and Love (1989), which for the first time featured more songs written by other members of the band than by him; the album was also the band's first not to feature versions of any traditional songs. [17] Although MacGowan again wrote the majority of the songs on the Pogues' next album, Hell's Ditch (1990), [18] it proved to be his last with the band, as he was expelled from the group the following year due to his unreliability and substance abuse issues. [19] [2] Stacy took over as lead vocalist for the group's sixth album, Waiting for Herb (1993), [19] for which Finer wrote the majority of the songs. [20] After the 1996 album Pogue Mahone , which included cover versions of songs originally recorded by Ronnie Lane and Bob Dylan, [21] the band broke up, [19] although they reunited for live shows from 2001 onwards, [2] and most recently performed in 2024, commemorating MacGowan, who had died the previous year. [22] [23]
The band also recorded songs that did not appear on their seven studio albums, including many which appeared as the B-sides of singles. They contributed original songs to the soundtracks of the films Sid and Nancy (1986) and Straight to Hell (1987), in the latter of which several members of the band also acted. [3] On multiple occasions, they recorded collaborations with the Irish band the Dubliners and with Kirsty MacColl. In 2008, more than forty previously unreleased songs recorded by the band throughout their career were made available in the box set Just Look Them Straight in the Eye and Say... Pogue Mahone!! [24]
