Shane MacGowan, the singer-songwriter and frontman of The Pogues, perhaps best known for the Christmas ballad “Fairytale of New York,” died Thursday, his family said. He was 65.
“It is with the deepest sorrow and heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of our most beautiful, darling and dearly beloved Shane MacGowan,” his wife Victoria Clarke, his sister Siobhan and father Maurice said in a statement. The singer died peacefully with his family by his side.
Victoria wrote on Instagram:
I don’t know how to say this so I am just going to say it. Shane who will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life and the most beautiful soul and beautiful angel and the sun and the moon and the start and end of everything that I hold dear has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese.
I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him and to have had so many years of life and love and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures. There’s no way to describe the loss that I am feeling and the longing for just one more of his smiles that lit up my world.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you for your presence in this world you made it so very bright and you gave so much joy to so many people with your heart and soul and your music. You will live in my heart forever. Rave on in the garden all wet with rain that you loved so much. You meant the world to me.
Before joining The Pogues alongside Cait O’Riordan, Peter “Spider” Stacy, James Fearnley, Andrew Ranken, and Jem Finer in 1982, he performed under the alias Shane O’Hooligan on London’s punk scene. The band revolutionized traditional Irish music — wielding banjo, accordion, and tin whistle and melding it with punk rock energy. Their longtime frontman is rightly hailed by many as a lyrical genius. “I regard Shane as easily the best lyric writer of our generation,” Nick Cave once said.
“I know he’s got a reputation for outrageous behavior [and] lots of alcohol in his act … but he’s one of the most well-read, sophisticated people I’ve ever met,” iconic producer Hal Willner told NPR in 2013.
The musician had been hospitalized in Dublin for several months after being diagnosed with viral encephalitis in late 2022. He was discharged last week, ahead of his upcoming birthday on Christmas Day.
