Furious right wingers are strangely angry at Stormzy for Fairytale of New York being censored

This year may be unconventional but some traditions just won’t go away.

Yes, it isn’t Christmas without a debate about ‘Fairytale of New York’.

The BBC announced that it would not be playing the 1987 original version of the Christmas tune by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, because of worries that younger listeners would be “particularly sensitive to derogatory terms for gender and sexuality.”

For years, the internet has erupted like clockwork to argue over whether it’s acceptable to play the original song, which contains a homophobic slur.

And now Stormzy has been brought into the discourse for some reason.

Why?

The people defending the lyrics of ‘Fairytale of New York’ insist that there’s some kind of double standard going on in radio stations. If it’s wrong to give airtime to ‘Fairytale of New York’, what about all of Stormzy’s songs, they argue.

In one instance, a Twitter user asked what was so offensive about the song in the first place. Another replied, “If it was Stormzy, the BBC would love it.”

These sentiments were echoed again (and again) until Stormzy started to trend internationally on Twitter.

Is that the case?

Not at all. Omitting homophobic slurs from ‘Fairytale of New York’ is just a radio edit, a practice that has been done to songs with expletives for decades – including tracks by Stormzy. You would never hear a song laden with swear words on Radio 1 by any artist, never mind Stormzy. There’s no reason to believe The Pogues track should be treated any differently.

Others seem to have been misled completely into believing that the song is being outright banned from radio stations, which isn’t true in the slightest. Stations will just play the radio edit, which again, is nothing new.

Why is Stormzy being singled out?

Very good question. The rapper has absolutely nothing to do with ‘Fairytale of New York’, so why is he being brought into this in the first place? As many argued it’s just another case of people attacking Stormzy, a Black man, unfairly, and an example of how racism influences discourse.

If you were to even entertain that line of thinking, there isn’t even a comparable argument. Stormzy himself has apologised for offensive language. When past homophobic tweets resurfaced, the rapper shared a sincere apology.

“I said some foul and offensive things whilst tweeting years ago at a time when I was young and proudly ignorant,” he wrote. “Very hurtful and discriminative views that I’ve unlearned as I’ve grown up and become a man ... The comments I made were unacceptable and disgusting, full stop.”

‘Fairytale of New York’ shouldn’t be banned, but giving slurs airplay is not acceptable.

We accepted that a long time ago.

Among those who agree: Kirsty MacColl. In a 1992 Top of the Pops performance, the singer changed the offending lyric to “You’re cheap and you’re haggard”. If MacColl was fine with change, there’s no reason for people to fight against it.

When people are begging to be able to sing the song in its original form, slurs and all, it says more about them than anything else.