Fairytale of New York Performed at Shane MacGowan’s Funeral Without Canceling the Word “Faggot”

Shane MacGowan’s funeral happened at the St. Mary of the Rosary Church in Dublin on Friday.

Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill did a rendition of “Fairytale of New York.”

God bless them for not dropping the word “faggot” from the song. I thought they might say “oh well, we can’t say such a word in the church.” But Lisa dropped the hard F, God bless her. (The song has been played on the radio for years now removing the word “faggot.” This is sort of a big deal.)

God bless Shane.

This is the first celebrity death I’ve ever cared about. The death doesn’t matter – everyone dies. It’s just that when a man dies, you have to consider his life. I’ve been doing that. I didn’t write a big tribute to him when it happened last week, because I thought I needed to do something else, but there isn’t really anything else I can do, so I’ll probably just go through some things next week.

I also want to write reviews of all the albums, and say what some of the songs mean to me.

Johnny Depp was there and opened the first prayer. I’m not really sure how I feel about that. I don’t know that Johnny Depp is even a Christian (and might be involved with Satan), let alone Irish. I’ve felt closer to him over the last few years, because he fought and won a war against a woman, but I would have liked to have seen Conor McGregor open the first prayer.

Depp was friends with Shane for a long time. He said Shane told him to forgive his stupid whore wife (which I agree with – what is the point of not forgiving someone, it only hurts you). So I’m glad Depp and everyone else Shane knew was there, but I don’t even think Conor got to speak from what I’ve seen.

He might not have wanted to speak for whatever reason, I don’t know. But he would have said the opening prayer if asked and someone decided to ask Depp to do it instead. Or maybe Shane asked him to do it. I don’t know. No one has said that. It seems like a decision that some woman made because Johnny Depp is globally more famous than Conor.

I know the non-Irish are sitting here asking “what the hell is this guy doing groaning about the arrangement of the funeral?” It’s meta-humor.

It was a beautiful procession and service, from the clips and photos I’ve seen.

I am going to sit and watch the entire stream.

Nick Cave, who the reader is aware I have sick respect for, did “A Rainy Night in Soho.”

Shane MacGowan was a devout Catholic, and hopefully more devout in the second half of his life than the first half (the evidence shows that).

I would ask everyone to say a prayer for him.