Fairytale of New York undergoing rewrites and aborted attempts at recording, and losing its original female vocalist along the way, before finally being completed in August 1987. Although the single never reached the coveted UK Christmas number one, being kept at number two on its original release in 1987 by the Pet Shop Boys' cover version of "Always on My Mind", it has proved enduringly popular with both music critics and the public: to date the song has reached the UK Top 20 on fifteen separate occasions since its original release in 1987, including every year since 2005, and was certified double platinum in
Peace and Love (The Pogues album) as a song title, and Napper Tandy, mentioned in the first line of "Boat Train", and was adapted from a line in the Irish rebel song "The Wearing of the Green". Likewise the MacGowan song "Cotton Fields" draws on the Lead Belly song of the same name. Mark Deming of Allmusic said that "Peace and Love" "isn't as good as the two Pogues albums that preceded it", but felt that "it does make clear that MacGowan was hardly the only talented songwriter in the band". Robert Christgau, on the other hand, believed that "Shane MacGowan will remain the only Pogue