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
Fairytale of New York merely set at Christmas. In the UK it is the most-played Christmas song of the 21st Century. The song has featured in many UK-based surveys and polls: The song was the subject of BBC Radio 4's "Soul Music" series on 22 December 2015, with a repeat on the same station on 26 December 2015 and then on the BBC iPlayer. Among those appearing in the programme were The Pogues' pianist James Fearnley — who tells how "the song started off as a transatlantic love story between an Irish seafarer missing his girl at Christmas before becoming the bittersweet reminiscences of