‘Greatest lyricist’: Irish president leads Ireland’s tributes to Shane MacGowan

The Irish president, Michael D Higgins, has led Ireland’s tributes to Shane MacGowan, describing the Pogues frontman as one of “music’s greatest lyricists”.

After the singer’s death at the age of 65, Higgins compared MacGowan’s songs with “perfectly crafted poems” that captured “the measure of our dreams”.

“Like so many across the world, it was with the greatest sadness that I learned this morning of the death of Shane MacGowan,” Higgins said in a statement on Thursday.

“Shane will be remembered as one of music’s greatest lyricists. So many of his songs would be perfectly crafted poems, if that would not have deprived us of the opportunity to hear him sing them.

The Irish president, Michael D Higgins.

“The genius of Shane’s contribution includes the fact that his songs capture within them, as Shane would put it, the measure of our dreams – of so many worlds, and particularly those of love, of the emigrant experience and of facing the challenges of that experience with authenticity and courage, and of living and seeing the sides of life that so many turn away from.

“His words have connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history, encompassing so many human emotions in the most poetic of ways.”

Higgins said there was “particular poignancy” that MacGowan’s death had come so soon after that of Sinéad O’Connor, the Irish singer who died in July.

MacGowan, who was the lead singer and songwriter of the Pogues, died on Thursday after a long period of ill health. A family statement said MacGowan had died at 3.30am, describing him as “our most beautiful, darling and dearly beloved”.

His wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, wrote in a statement on social media: “Shane will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life … I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him.”

In December 2022, MacGowan was hospitalised with viral encephalitis, and as a result spent several months of 2023 in intensive care.

“He was an amazing musician and artist,” the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, tweeted on Thursday. “His songs beautifully captured the Irish experience, especially the experience of being Irish abroad.”

Speaking in the Dáil, the foreign minister, Micheál Martin called MacGowan an iconic musician whose death was particularly moving at this time of year in the context of the Christmas song Fairytale of New York.

The Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, said Ireland had lost a beloved icon. “Nobody told the Irish story like Shane – stories of emigration, heartache, dislocation, redemption, love and joy,” she said.

Gerry Adams, the former Sinn Féin leader, called MacGowan a good friend and said he had been with him last week when he was released from hospital.

“Shane was an extraordinary human being whose music and kindness lifted people’s spirit,” Adams said in a statement. “Tá sé anois ar shlí na fírinne” – he said, which can be translated as “he has gone to his eternal reward”.

His bandmate Peter “Spider” Stacy posted an image of MacGowan performing on a stage. “O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done …” he wrote.