Some bloody common sense at last

It’s Shane’s Teeth That Are Scary, Not What Passes Between ‘Em

Shall we be pedantic for a moment? A song like “Fairytale” is tantamount to a fictional narrative. It’s about a brawling, fractious relationship between two Micks* in Gotham. MacColl and MacGowan were never romantically involved in real life — thank Christ — and so her playful mockery of him as part of a working-class domestic routine should not be seen as her, or the songwriters’, actual mode of tabletalk. And even if it were, the fact that such tabletalk exists means that art has a moral responsibility to represent it faithfully