The Edge on MacGowan: truth in the contradictions

U2 have released their cover of The Pogues’ 1989 track ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’. The recording, which arrived on 28 August 2026, is the first music from the tribute album ‘20th Century Paddy - The Songs of Shane MacGowan’, due on 13 November 2026. The Edge set the tone for the project with a plain assessment of the songwriter at its centre. “Shane MacGowan was full of contradictions — and that’s where the truth of him lived. He could be precise about what mattered and gloriously careless about everything else.” The finished album will carry contributions from Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Depp, Tom Waits, The Libertines, Hozier, Glen Hansard, Primal Scream and others. Half of all artist royalties will be donated to the Dublin Simon Community, which provides housing and healthcare for people experiencing homelessness. The tribute was first announced in March 2026; U2’s finished track is the first to reach listeners. The catalogue the tribute answers Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan died on 30 November 2023. Born in Kent on 25 December 1957 to Irish parents, he began in the punk band the Nipple Erectors before founding the Pogues in 1982. Guided by his extended family and by the examples of the nineteenth-century poet James Clarence Mangan and the playwright Brendan Behan, he turned punk roots into a sound that carried Irish traditional music into the noise of London, the Irish diaspora and the longer sweep of Irish history. The Pogues’ critical high-water mark was the 1988 album ‘If I Should Fall from Grace with God’. ‘Fairytale of New York’, the collaboration with Kirsty MacColl, became a seasonal fixture; ‘Sally MacLennane’, ‘Dirty Old Town’ and ‘The Irish Rover’ stood beside it in a set of songs that refused to settle. Unprofessional behaviour later led to MacGowan’s departure mid-tour. He formed Shane MacGowan and The Popes, recorded two studio albums and continued to tour internationally. That body of work — not a sealed archive, but a living songbook — is what the November release sets out to meet. Irish voices, and the circle beyond Among the names already attached, Hozier and Glen Hansard bring the material back onto home ground. Hansard has fronted The Frames since 1990, moved through the folk-rock duo The Swell Season, and issued solo albums from ‘Rhythm and Repose’ in 2012 onwards; ‘Didn’t He Ramble’ (2015) drew a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. Hozier’s writing, from the ‘Take Me to Church’ EP and the self-titled 2014 album through later records including the ‘Unreal Unearth’ series, has kept folk, soul and blues in steady conversation with literary and social themes. The Libertines and Primal Scream add English and Scottish rock lineages that once shared the same generation’s stages and attitudes. Springsteen, Waits and Depp widen the circle still further. The final running order and the complete list of guests have not yet been made public. What is fixed is the charity split: half the artist royalties will support the Dublin Simon Community’s work on housing and healthcare. U2’s cover is already available. The full album, ‘20th Century Paddy - The Songs of Shane MacGowan’, arrives on 13 November 2026.