The Medusa Fora

At the moment I have this obsession with interpretting Pogues songs and would love to hear your views on what these great songs are about

Please feel free to pick a song and give us your meaning to it

Thank you

Rainy night in Soho - all about getting old (written by a twenty odd old)

i think if you look over the lyrics to Rainy Night In Soho, you might notice it alls about drink and Shane's relationship with it. Beautiful song that I've always thought was about a couple getting old and still being in love throughout the years but then the Ginger Lady is not his girl but a bottle of whiskey

erebh wrote:i think if you look over the lyrics to Rainy Night In Soho, you might notice it alls about drink and Shane's relationship with it. Beautiful song that I've always thought was about a couple getting old and still being in love throughout the years but then the Ginger Lady is not his girl but a bottle of whiskey

The Ginger Lady is a small detail, a filling in of an empty corner of a song. It is a song entirely about aging with a quiet grace, living in the now and enjoying a love affair that can be measured in decades rather than years. To suggest that all of MacGowan's songs are about his alcoholism is a bit of a knock to the man's talent and capability for yearning. Kind of a shallow view, I think.

The reason the Ginger Lady is by the bed is because the "You" of the song is talking in the narrator's head. Which means, that, for whatever reason, she isn't with the singer.

I never really though RNIS was about the drink. I mean, not all of his songs have to be about it

Irish Rover is about a Dog - does that help

Sunny side of the street is about it being sunnier on the other side of the street. We could go on all day ha ha

An excellent site for stuff about Pogues songs and meanings, and all kinds of other related stuff, is Fran Moran's The Parting Glass: http://www.poguetry.com/

'Tis well worth a visit for anyone who hasn't yet found it.

Not that that means meanings can't be discussed elsewhere, of course.

Not sure if im right or not but i think South Australia is about ,,,,, South Australia

As they say,,, I`ll get my coat!!!

i always thought rainy night in soho was about shanne bradley and whisky, altho i did read recently ghosts help shane write songs ,hence the lyric " Now the song is nearly over
We may never find out what it means"

the whisky bit sums this lyric up
Sometimes I wake up in the morning
The gingerlady by my bed

whatever it means i dont really care because it is possibly one of the greatest songs ever written ,get a lump in me throat everytime i hear it just for the sheer brilliance of the lyrics.

Rainy Night in Soho was written by ghosts? Their descendants should sue Shane for copyright infringement.

South Australia is an old sea shanty..find The Dubliners version on youtube, with the late Barney McKenna on vocals..totally different to the Pogues version.

You're the measure of my dreams - speaks for itself - maybe measure of my drams would have been too obvious...

Sometimes I wake up in the morning
The gingerlady by my bed
Covered in a cloak of silence
I hear you talking in my head

How many times have you woken up with a hangover staring at the half bottle that nearly killed you last night?

I'm not talking of the first time, I never thinnk about the last

I took shelter from a shower
And I stepped into your arms
On a rainy night in Soho
The wind was whistling all its charms

Maybe he was walking through Soho, it was pissing raining and he stepped into a bar and ordered a drink, sitting there at the bar talking to it - I sang you all my sorrows
You told me all your joys



while not all of his songs are about drink a lot of them are, i sometimes wonder if Shane never took a drop in his life what a genius he would have been but then i think maybe the drink, his experiences etc have given him the gift of song writing and that's what makes him the glorious genius he is...

Repeal of the Licensing Laws is about Time.