Better Things: Tuesday Morning

"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.

This isn't the first song I heard by The Pogues. It's not the first song anyone thinks of when they think of The Pogues. And, yeah, Fairytale of New York is awesome and several of their versions of traditional tunes, like South Australia and Young Ned of the Hill and Medley, rock out vastly more than any folk song can be expected to. (And The Sick Bed of Cuchuliann is a masterpiece about a certain kind of person.)

But the Pogues song I love the most, the one that actually makes me smile, is from that era after Shane MacGowan left the band, the least obvious bit of Pogues history.

It's Tuesday Morning, a mostly happy song about love and caring for someone, no matter what life throws at you:

But I knew that you
With your heart beating
And your eyes shining
Would be dreaming of me
Lying with you
On a Tuesday morning

It all has that uniquely Pogues sound to it - both folk and rock, but nothing like "folk rock." It's from the era when there were less punky than they started out, but it's not too smooth - just true and pure and real. It's a happy song despite itself, a song about finding, or maybe making happiness, out of whatever you have at hand...even if it's just a Tuesday morning.