During a concert in Dublin in 2022, Bob Dylan paused between songs to pay tribute to another singer-songwriter who was in attendance that night. “I want to say hello to Shane MacGowan”, said Dylan, praising MacGowan as one of his “favourite artists”.
MacGowan, who has died aged 65, came to prominence in the 1980s as the singer and songwriter for The Pogues. In that role, MacGowan became, as the BBC Four documentary The Great Hunger: the Life and Songs of Shane MacGowan explained, “the first voice that arose from within the London-Irish to give defiant and poetic expression to a community which had never really felt able to proclaim itself”.
The Pogues gave visibility to the second-generation Irish in England, a facet of migrant life that had previously gone uncharted in mainstream popular culture.
