I fell in love with “Fairytale of New York,” the indelible Christmas song by the Pogues, before I’d heard a note.
I grew up in the boarded-up, bombed-out Northern Ireland of the Troubles. There wasn’t an abundance of galleries in Derry, where I lived, at the time, and my father would take me to a record store where the sleeves were one of my main early experiences of art. I’d spend hours escaping into the alien worlds of prog rock and heavy metal.
