President Higgins Leads Tributes To Music Legend Shane MacGowan

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Dalton Mac Namee
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The world of music, media and politics continues to pay its respects to the late Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan.

Music icon, MacGowan’s death was confirmed yesterday, having been previously treated in hospital for an infection.

His death was confirmed via a statement shared online by Irish punk band The Pogues, who were fronted by MacGowan in the 1980s.

“It is with the deepest of sorrow and heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of Shane MacGowan”, the Pogues wrote.

“Shane died peacefully at 3am this morning with his wife Victoria and family by his side”.

“the measure of our dreams”

Paying tribute to MacGowan, President Michael D Higgins released this statement.

“Like so many across the world, it was with the greatest sadness that I learned this morning of the death of Shane MacGowan”, he began.

Mr Higgins continued, “Shane will be remembered as one of music’s greatest lyricists. So many of his songs would be perfectly crafted poems, if that would not have deprived us of the opportunity to hear him sing them”. 

He also added, “The genius of Shane’s contribution includes the fact that his songs capture within them, as Shane would put it, the measure of our dreams – of so many worlds, and particularly those of love, of the emigrant experience and of facing the challenges of that experience with authenticity and courage, and of living and seeing the sides of life that so many turn away from”. 

MacGowan Captured “so many human emotions in the most poetic of ways” 

Elsewhere, Mr Higgins also stated that MacGowan’s words “connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history”. 

He also felt that the singer had this ability to capture “so many human emotions in the most poetic of ways”. 

President Higgins also pointed to Shane MacGowan’s late mother Therese, as a key influence in the singer’s love of music.

“Shane’s talent was nurtured from a young age by his mother Therese, herself an award winning folk singer in her own right”, the president added.

“Therese, who lost her life in such tragic circumstances on New Year’s Day 2017, inspired in Shane the love of Irish music and traditions which resulted in the wonderful music and lyrics which have been a source of such joy for so many people”. 

‘Fairytale Of New York’

President Higgins also detailed some of MacGowan’s finest works, including his Pogues’ festive collaboration with the late Kirsty McColl, ‘Fairytale of New York’. 

“Born on Christmas Day, there was perhaps some form of destiny which led Shane to writing Fairytale of New York, the timeless quality of which will surely mean that it will be listened to every Christmas for the next century or more”, Higgins wrote.

“Likewise songs like Rainy Night in Soho, A Pair of Brown Eyes, If I Should Fall from Grace with God and so many others will live on far into the years and decades to come”.

“I think too of Haunted, and the particular poignancy that both Shane and Sinéad O’Connor have left us in such quick succession”.

Back in 2018, President Michael D Higgins presented Shane MacGowan with a lifetime achievement award in the National Concert Hall for the singer’s 60th birthday.

Referring to this, Higgins said it was “a richly deserved honour”. 

“On behalf of Sabina and I, may I extend my deepest condolences to Shane’s wife Victoria, his sister Siobhán, his father Maurice, his bandmates in the Pogues and other projects, and to all his many friends and family”, he concluded.

Higgins’ tribute to MacGowan, follows heartfelt messages from the late singer’s wife Victoria Mary Clarke, along with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Nick Cave, the Wolfe Tones and more.

See below.

 

Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist Flea, also shared this beautiful tribute to MacGowan. See here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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