Pete Doherty and collaborator Frédéric Lo teamed up for a cover of The Pogues‘ Christmas classic ‘Fairytale Of New York’ on French television – check their performance out below.
The pair have been working together extensively this year, releasing an album called ‘The Fantasy Life of Poetry and Crime’ in March, which they then took on tour later in the spring.
Now, they have capped off a busy year with this festive cover, which they performed accompanied by an orchestra on a stage covered in snowy fir trees.
Watch the performance below:
The Libertines and Babyshambles frontman and the French musician spoke to NME earlier this year about their album, which they made in lockdown.
Discussing the sources of lyrical inspiration for the album, Doherty said: “A lot of it was inspired by films and the few years I was in Margate before I ended up in lockdown in Normandy and then completely separated from England and from addiction. I was getting clean. I suppose there was just so much recklessness for such a long period of time and not really caring what anyone else thought that it reverses and all of a sudden you go from having no pressure to being hyper-sensitively aware of this new expectation.
“I think the creative process is like an addiction in itself. I need to write songs, and I’ve never really got to the bottom of it.”
In a four-star review of ‘The Fantasy Life of Poetry and Crime’, NME wrote: “Doherty’s folky 2019 album with The Puta Madres was the sound of the former kid in the riot staring out to sea and looking for a little peace. Here with Lo, it feels like he’s truly found it. Now more than ever, this record is truly Arcadian.”
The Libertines are currently working on their fourth album. They offered NME’s In Conversation an update on its progress, with frontman Carl Barat saying: “Sonically, we want to do something we haven’t done before… I think we’ll be looking to do something with a different energy than before. But we’re not at that stage yet.”