Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.
Elvis Costello loved the Pogues in the 1980s. The band’s opinions of Costello, however, were mixed. Bassist Cait O’Riordan began a 16-year relationship with Costello after he produced the beloved Celtic punk band. The late great Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan, on the other hand, soured on Costello as they worked together on the band’s second album Rum Sodomy & The Lash, which will turn 40 on August 5th, and 1986’s Poguetry in Motion EP. “I told him to get his fat arse out of the studio and never come back,” MacGowan recalled in the 2020 documentary Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan.
O’Riordan sang with MacGowan on the original demo of the Pogues’ Christmas classic “Fairytale of New York,” which was ultimately released in 1987 as a duet between MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl. O’Riordan’s only lead vocal performance on a Pogues album is the Rum highlight “I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day.” The Irish music hall song also known as “Jock Stuart” is at least 150 years old. But the two most famous modern recordings of the song, the Pogues version and a 1960 a cappella rendition by Scottish folk singer Jeannie Robertson, were both sung by women, putting a playful spin on the perspective of the lyric.
O’Riordan left the Pogues in 1986 and isn’t a part of the band’s current A Celebration of 40 Years of Rum Sodomy & the Lash tour. She co-wrote several songs on Costello albums, including Blood & Chocolate and Spike, occasionally contributing backing vocals, but never released any solo albums. So “I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day” remains, along with “Haunted” from the Sid & Nancy soundtrack, one of the few enduring recordings of O’Riordan’s lovely singing voice during her time with the Pogues. The Irish punk band Fontaines D.C. covered the Pogues’ arrangement of “I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day” during a 2020 live performance for Sirius XM radio.
Three more essential Pogues deep album cuts:
“Streams of Whiskey”
“Streams of Whiskey” from 1984’s Red Roses for Me was never released as a single, but the Pogues have performed it more than any other song over the years, and it’s perhaps the greatest drinking song in a catalog full of them.
“The Body of an American”
The Wire creator David Simon is a big Pogues fan, and used “The Body of an American” from Poguetry in Motion in three different episodes of the HBO series. Simon later cast Spider Stacy of the Pogues in Treme, and in 2013 it was reported that Simon was working with an Irish theater company on a stage musical involving Pogues songs.
“Sit Down by the Fire”
One of MacGowan’s most entertaining lyrics on 1988’s If I Should Fall from Grace with God is framed as a bedtime story. But it very quickly takes a turn into a terrifyingly vivid description of all the creepy and dangerous things that lurk in the darkness after the sun goes down. “Good night and God bless, now fuck off to bed,” MacGowan concludes.
