Three LPs, 36 Songs: Shane MacGowan Tribute Arrives Today

A three-LP, 36-song tribute to Shane MacGowan lands today. 20th Century Paddy – The Songs of Shane MacGowan gathers Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, U2, Hozier, Dropkick Murphys, Primal Scream and many more, covering songs from every stage of the late songwriter's career.

The project grew out of MacGowan's funeral, held shortly after his death in December 2023. Nick Cave performed the Pogues' "A Rainy Night in Soho." Glen Hansard and Lisa O'Neill duetted on "Fairytale of New York." The surviving Pogues raised "The Parting Glass," an Irish folk song they recorded in 1985. Irish President Michael D. Higgins, Bono, Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, Gerry Adams, Johnny Depp and Aidan Gillen attended.

What did the funeral set in motion?

For MacGowan's widow, Victoria Mary Clarke, the service was transcendent. "It was like he was just on the roof of the church looking down, beaming this energy into everybody," she says. "I felt it and I got up and danced, and I felt him celebrating."

Watching friends interpret her husband's music, then hearing more renditions at a 2024 tribute concert in New York, moved her to act. "It felt like that was something I'd like to have a record of," she says. She started calling artists. She ended up with enough music for three LPs.

Who made the cut?

The roster spans three generations. It includes musicians MacGowan admired — Springsteen, Waits, U2 — peers such as the Jesus and Mary Chain and Primal Scream, and younger artists like the Libertines and Hozier, for whom he was a role model. The Pogues themselves recorded a Nips cover. New Irish groups Kingfishr and Amble contributed, as did Japan's Pinch of Snuff, a band with no clear MacGowan connection.

The Jesus and Mary Chain's Jim Reid recalls the shock of first hearing MacGowan's fusion of Irish reels and punk. "To me, it sounded like punk music," he says. "Once you'd heard it, you'd think, 'Why hadn't that happened sooner?'"

Dropkick Murphys bring their own history to "The Body of an American," the mini-novel-in-a-song from the Pogues' 1985 breakthrough Rum Sodomy & the Lash. The Boston band, Irish Americans themselves, has covered it for years. "I love how that song touches on American history and the Irish American experience to a degree," frontman Ken Casey says. "We wanted to do the cover as on the nose as you could and pay respects in that way."

Casey saw the "beautiful chaos" firsthand when Dropkick Murphys toured with the reunited Pogues on a run of Christmas arena shows in Ireland and the U.K. in 2005. "You wouldn't know where Shane is, and the band would be waiting to go on, and it would seem so dysfunctional and so chaotic, and then they'd walk onto that stage and it would come together seamlessly every night," he says. "It's nice to meet your idols, and they end up being good shits."

How quickly did artists say yes?

Almost immediately, Clarke says. Springsteen said "absolutely yes" right away. When MacGowan died, Springsteen phoned Casey — "He had a few Guinnesses in him," Casey recalls — to reminisce. Springsteen's contribution is "A Rainy Night in Soho."

U2 squeezed time between sessions for their new album to cut the Pogues' "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah." "I don't think the band realized quite how much Shane liked them and their music because he wouldn't say it to their faces," Clarke says, "but he secretly listened to their music a lot."

The Jesus and Mary Chain's track has its own history. MacGowan wrote "I'll Be Your Handbag" for the Scottish group in the Nineties; they never recorded it. "The demo was Shane with an acoustic guitar singing into a ghetto blaster," Reid says. "It didn't sound like much at the time, because I'm not sure that he was even sober when he was doing it." MacGowan cut it himself for The Snake, his first album with the Popes. Now the Mary Chain have answered with their own version.

Reid insists the drinking and drugs should not define the legacy. "That's actually the least important thing about Shane," he says. "Shane just wrote great songs, he made great music, and he was an unpredictable character, and you don't get those in music often enough."

Who passed — and who fought over songs?

Nick Cave was the only artist who ultimately declined, despite performing at the funeral and having recorded a duet of "What a Wonderful World" with MacGowan. "He did initially say yes," Clarke reports, "and then he changed his mind and said that he'd decided he didn't like tribute albums and he didn't want to be on one, and, when he dies, he wants to make sure there's no tribute album." Cave did not reply to a request for comment.

Surprisingly, nobody fought over "Fairytale of New York." "I think people were frightened by it," Clarke says. "They thought they would be judged." Hozier took it on, with Jessie Buckley. A couple of artists did tussle over "A Pair of Brown Eyes" and "The Broad Majestic Shannon."

The Murder Capital asked for a song Clarke had not even considered: "The Song With No Name," a ballad MacGowan wrote as an apology for taking Clarke for granted. "It's a reckoning with one's shadow, and acknowledgment of love as the singular matter in life, when survival is taken care of course," the band's James McGovern says. Their version strips the traditional instrumentation, leaving McGovern's voice over noise, feedback, chimes and guitar, with haunted backing vocals from Wolf Alice's Ellie Rowsell.

Waits' rendition of "Summer in Siam," from the Pogues' 1990 album Hell's Ditch, is one of Clarke's favorites. "It feels like a Waits song," she says. Asked why he contributed, Waits answered with a prose poem: "Shane knew language is music… the voice is music… the instruments are language… music is language. His songs come from the earth, the wind, the birds, and the bees, the gone and forgotten but for their songs."

For Clarke, the 36 tracks assemble a mosaic of a writer whose moods shifted across decades. "I think he would enjoy the fuss," she says. "He loved the idea of equality — he was a socialist — but he also really enjoyed being famous and being singled out as a genius."