For most of the year, I couldn’t care less about Travis Kelce. I mean, good for him: he’s engaged to one of the biggest pop stars in the world; GQ dubbed him “America’s Sweetheart” in August; and he co-hosts a successful and rather enjoyable podcast with his brother, Jason—even if it’s just another offering by two men.
But come Yuletide, I am unashamedly one of Kelce’s 189,381 listeners on Spotify—for no other reason than his and his brother’s rendition of The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” called “Fairytale of Philadelphia.”
Let me preface this by saying that I grew up in New Jersey, and I’ve long been a fan of Jason, who spent his entire 13-year career in football playing as a center for the Philadelphia Eagles. I first saw the older Kelce at the team’s victory parade in 2018, after I split a $93 cab at 4 a.m. from New Jersey to Philadelphia with three of my friends to watch the Eagles celebrate their first-ever Super Bowl win. We waited for hours in front of the city’s Art Museum before he appeared dressed as a mummer and shouted into the microphone, “You want to talk about an underdog? You want to talk about a hungry dog? For 52 years, you’ve been starved in this Championship. Everybody wonders why we’re so mean, everybody wonders why the Philadelphia Eagles aren’t the nicest fans—if I don’t eat breakfast, I’m pissed off.” Great stuff, and it’s one of the rare times that I remember feeling a rush of adrenaline-fueled pride for Philadelphia.
The only other times I feel that are when I listen to “Fairytale of Philadelphia.”
“Fairytale of Philadelphia” is—in many ways—a musical abomination. It’s a standalone track on a 2023 album by The Philly Specials, a musical group formed of Eagles players Lane Johnson, Jordan Mailata, and Jason Kelce. The trio started the band in 2022 as a way to raise money for the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center, nicknaming it after the trick play that won the team the Super Bowl in 2018. Since then, they’ve released various annual jingles—though this year’s offering was just a music video for an old 2022 rendition of “White Christmas,” possibly because Jason retired last year. And as cute as the concept is, the band sounds exactly how you’d imagine a team of football players to sound.
But unlike other songs by The Philly Specials, “Fairytale of Philadelphia” stands out. It was a 2023 chart-topper; its cover art uses Charles Schulz-style art to make the Kelce brothers into Peanuts characters; and it excellently leans into the theme of brotherly love. There’s warmth (“So Happy Christmas, I love you, brother”); banter (“You dirtbag, you phony, you lousy jabroni”); and a sweet nod to Momma Kelce (“You took my dreams from me, when Mom first had you”). It’s a song that you can’t help but belt.
Plus, this Christmas ditty does for me what I assume “Fairytale of New York” does for others. The Pogues, the London-based Irish band, originally released “Fairytale of New York” in 1987, which tells the story of an Irish couple who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1940s, who have since fallen on hard times and ruined dreams. It’s not like any other Christmas carol, and in 2020, Victoria Mary Clark, wife of lead singer Shane MacGowan, said, “Really, the story could apply to any couple who went anywhere and found themselves down on their luck.” I personally had never heard it until I moved to England in 2021, and everyone—and I mean everyone—would not stop singing it come November 1.
MacGowan died in 2023, but not before commenting on the Kelce’s version, tweeting a link to the song and writing, “Tell them I am knocked out.” Speaking about MacGowan’s death in 2023, Jason tweeted, “It was an honor for my brother and I to take a stab at such a beautiful song in a different angle, and his acknowledgement of it is beyond surreal.” Again, great stuff.
Having grown up equidistant to New York City and Philadelphia, I never felt as sentimental about the Big Apple as I did about the City of Brotherly Love. And bizarrely, the ones to really tip the scale for me were none other than the Kelce brothers—and for that, thanks, jawns.
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