The Pogues are an English or Anglo-Irish[a] Celtic punk band founded in King's Cross, London, in 1982,[1] by Shane MacGowan, Spider Stacy and Jem Finer.

Initially poorly received in traditional circles—folk musician Tommy Makem labelled the band "the greatest disaster ever to hit Irish music"—they were later credited with reinvigorating the genre.

[3] After their founding, the Pogues added more members, including James Fearnley and Cait O'Riordain, and built a reputation playing raucous live shows in London pubs and clubs.

After opening for the Clash on their 1984 tour, they released their first studio album, Red Roses for Me, featuring a mix of traditional Irish songs and original compositions by MacGowan.

Written by MacGowan and Finer and recorded as a duet with Kirsty MacColl, it features on their critically acclaimed and commercially successful third studio album, If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988).

The Pogues recorded two more albums with MacGowan—Peace and Love (1989) and Hell's Ditch (1990)—before sacking him during a 1991 tour as his drug and alcohol dependency increasingly affected their live performances.

Shane and Stacy performed their first gig as The New Republicans at Richard Strange's Cabaret Futura in London's Rupert Street Soho in the early months of 1981.

Fearnley has noted that Stacy suggested the band's original name, taken from a sentence in James Joyce's Ulysses,[6] where the character Buck Mulligan exclaims: "Pogue mahone!

The performance, featuring Spider Stacy repeatedly smashing himself over the head with a beer tray, became a favourite with the viewers, but Stiff Records refused to release it as a single, feeling it was too late for it to help Red Roses for Me.

[citation needed] With the aid of producer Elvis Costello, they recorded the follow-up, Rum Sodomy & the Lash, in 1985 during which time guitarist Philip Chevron joined.

The album title is a famous comment falsely attributed to Winston Churchill who was supposedly describing the "true" traditions of the British Royal Navy.

[16] The album cover featured The Raft of the Medusa, with the faces of the characters in Théodore Géricault's painting replaced with those of the band members.

They first refused to record another album (offering up the four-track EP Poguetry in Motion instead); O'Riordan married Costello and left the band, to be replaced by bassist Darryl Hunt, formerly of Plummet Airlines and Pride of the Cross; and they added a multi-instrumentalist in Terry Woods, formerly of Steeleye Span.

Looming over the band at this period (as throughout their entire career) was the increasingly erratic behaviour of their vocalist and principal songwriter, Shane MacGowan.

The band remained stable enough to record If I Should Fall from Grace with God with its Christmas hit duet with Kirsty MacColl "Fairytale of New York".

As Mark Deming wrote in AllMusic, "It does make clear that MacGowan was hardly the only talented songwriter in the band – though the fact that the set's most memorable songs were written by others did not bode well for the group's future.

After Strummer's departure, the remaining seven Pogues recorded in 1993 Waiting for Herb, which contained the band's third and final top twenty single, "Tuesday Morning" which was written and sung by Spider Stacy.

Within months of their departures, ill health forced Phil Chevron to leave the band; he was replaced by his former guitar technician, Jamie Clarke.

The album was a commercial failure, and, following Jem Finer's decision to leave the band in 1996, the remaining members decided it was time to quit.

After the Pogues's break-up, the three remaining long-term members (Spider Stacy, Andrew Ranken and Darryl Hunt) played together briefly as The Vendettas.

In addition to The Vendettas, who Stacy freely admits lost all attraction when the Pogues reformed, Spider continued to write and record music with various bands, including the James Walbourne, Filthy Thieving Bastards, Dropkick Murphys and Astral Social Club.

[26][citation needed] His autobiography A Drink With Shane MacGowan, co-written with his journalist girlfriend Victoria Mary Clarke, was released in 2001.

[citation needed] The band, including MacGowan, re-formed for a Christmas tour in 2001 and performed nine shows in the UK and Ireland in December 2004.

The reunited Pogues played dates in the UK with support from the Dropkick Murphys in late 2005, and re-released their 1987 Christmas classic "Fairytale of New York" on 19 December, which went straight in at No.

Later they played a series of sold-out gigs during mid-October 2006 in San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles, and toured Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Dublin, and Nottingham in mid-December 2006.

They began a second US tour in March 2007, once again to coincide (and conclude) with a Roseland Ballroom New York City show on Saint Patrick's Day.

[39] On 3 May 2024, surviving members Finer, Fearnley and Stacy performed Pogues songs with a variety of guest musicians on vocals at Hackney Empire, London, to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Red Roses for Me.

[40] The re-formed band subsequently announced that they would be touring the UK and Ireland in 2025 to mark the fortieth anniversary of their second album, Rum Sodomy & the Lash.