Pogues star Shane MacGowan, known for the Christmas hit Fairytale Of New York, dies at the age of 65

Musician and singer Shane MacGowan, best known as the frontman of the Pogues, has died at the age of 65.

His wife Victoria Mary Clarke shared the news in a post on Instagram, saying: “Shane will always be the light in my eyes, the benchmark of my dreams and the love of my life.”

MacGowan had suffered from a number of health problems in recent years and was treated for an infection at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin earlier this month. He was Released from hospital last week ahead of his upcoming birthday on Christmas Day, where he was visited by his former bandmates Spider Stacy and Terry Woods, among others.

A statement was also posted on The Pogues' Instagram account on behalf of Clarke, his sister Siobhan and his father Maurice, announcing MacGowan's death with “deepest sadness and a heavy heart”. He died peacefully in the early hours of the morning surrounded by his family, they said.

“I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been loved so infinitely and unconditionally by him and to have experienced so many years of life and love and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures,” Clarke said in her tribute.

“There is no way to describe the loss I feel and the longing for just one more of his smiles that brightened my world. You will live in my heart forever. Continue celebrating in the rain-soaked garden you loved so much. You meant the world to me.”

Obituary for Shane MacGowan: A wild life and a raw talent

Born in Kent on December 25, 1957, the Irish star will forever be associated with the Christmas season thanks to the Pogues' 1987 hit, “Fairytale Of New York,” featuring the late Kirsty MacColl.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the groundbreaking band also had hits such as “Dirty Old Town,” “The Irish Rover,” “A Pair Of Brown Eyes,” and “A Rainy Night In Soho.”

MacGowan was a punk rebel who was almost as famous for his drinking and drug use – and the resulting damage to his teeth – as he was for his music.

But even at a young age he was a gifted storyteller and at the age of 13 he won a literary prize from the Daily Mirror and a scholarship to Westminster School for his essays.

“I didn't last very long there,” he told the Guardian in an interview in 2013. “I got caught for smoking a joint and kicked out.”

He has not been well in recent years, in December 2022 he was hospitalized for meningitis and spent some time in intensive care over the summer.

MacGowan had been confined to a wheelchair since 2015 after breaking his pelvis and then his right knee in several falls.

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The singer married Clarke at a ceremony in Copenhagen in 2018 with his Boyfriend Johnny Depp plays guitar at her wedding.

Writing in the Irish Independent before the wedding about her first meeting with MacGowan at the age of 16, Clarke said she was “completely overwhelmed” before describing a complicated relationship that “makes the 'Fairytale of New York' couple from Shane's Christmas Carol seem tame and orderly”.

“Nobody has told the Irish story like Shane”

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar paid tribute to an “amazing musician and artist”.

On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote: “His songs beautifully capture the Irish spirit, especially the feeling of being Irish abroad.”

Singer Nick Cave, who recorded a cover of Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World with MacGowan in 1992, described him as “a true friend and the greatest songwriter of his generation”.

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald also paid tribute to him. She described MacGowan as “a poet, a dreamer and a campaigner for social justice” and said Ireland had lost “one of its most beloved icons and the world one of its greatest songwriters”.

She continued: “Nobody has told the Irish story like Shane – stories of emigration, heartbreak, uprooting, redemption, love and joy.

“Shane has brought his unique style of music to all corners of the world and his music will continue to bring great joy for generations to come.

“Today we mourn his death. He was one of the best of us. Ni bheidh a leitheid aris ann.” (There will be no more like him).

Irish President Michael D. Higgins called MacGowan one of “music’s greatest lyricists.”

In his speech he said: “Many of his songs would be perfectly worked out poems if we had not been denied the opportunity to hear him sing them.

“The genius of Shane's contribution is that his songs, as Shane would put it, capture the magnitude of our dreams – of so many worlds, and particularly of love, of the experience of emigrating and of facing the challenges of that experience with authenticity and courage, and of living and seeing the sides of life that so many turn away from.

“His words connected Irish people all over the world with their culture and history and expressed so many human emotions in the most poetic way.”

He also said it was “particularly poignant” that MacGowan's death came so soon after the death of Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor. who died in July.

“Perhaps it was some sort of fate that led Shane to write Fairytale Of New York, as it was born on Christmas. Its timeless quality will surely ensure that the song will be heard every Christmas for the next century or more,” he said.

“Likewise, songs like Rainy Night In Soho, A Pair Of Brown Eyes, If I Should Fall From Grace With God and so many others will live on long into the years and decades to come.

“I also think of Haunted and the special intensity that both Shane and Sinead O’Connor have left us in such rapid succession.”

He added: “It was a great honour for me as President of Ireland to present Shane with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Concert Hall in January 2018 on the occasion of his 60th birthday. A well-deserved honour.”

The Irish folk group The Wolfe Tones also paid tribute to him and described MacGowan as a “superb lyricist”.