Victoria Mary Clarke, the widow of The Pogues singer Shane MacGowan, has told The Brendan O'Connor Show on RTÉ Radio 1 that a tribute album to her late husband will be released next year.
Writer and journalist Clarke was a guest on Saturday's show, picking five songs that mean a lot to her in life, including the Shane MacGowan and Sinéad O'Connor duet Haunted, Kneecap's Sick in the Head, and Van Morrison's Comfort You.
The second anniversary of Shane MacGowan's death is this Sunday, 30 November, and Clarke shared some details of the tribute album during her song choices.
Shane MacGowan: Twilight of a Celtic champion
Saluting Kneecap as "being very like the early Pogues", Clarke said that her late husband "was aware of Kneecap and he was very interested".
"You know, he was already quite ill at the time, but he was very interested in them. And I've been pursuing them to play one of his songs on the tribute album," Clarke revealed.
"Oh, so there's a tribute album?" said the host. "Tell me more."
"So, we've 30 people now doing songs," Clarke replied. "And it'll come out next year. But they're (Kneecap) definitely on my list of people I'd really like to [appear]."
"Do you have a song in mind for them?" asked O'Connor.
"I actually do, but I'm not going to tell you," said Clarke.
"Ah, go on!" said O'Connor.
"No!" said Clarke. "Because I have to tell them what it is!"
"So, who else is involved, then?" asked O'Connor.
"Well, there's a lot of other people," Clarke continued. "Like, there's Americans, there's English people, Irish people. It's kind of a mix."
"I presume Nick Cave," said O'Connor.
"You might, actually... well, I probably shouldn't say who they are, but they're kind of obvious," said Clarke. "Some of them are obvious, but then some of them are not obvious, and they're the ones I'm kind of interested for people to hear."
Clarke told O'Connor that her husband's music has been a comfort to her during the grief of the last two years.
"It's kind of comforting to know that there's a part of him that's still travelling around the place and still, like, very present in this dimension," she explained.
"I noticed that when Shane died initially, I wasn't able to listen to his stuff," Clarke recounted at the end of the interview.
"I was able to listen to his voice. I had recordings of me and him having chats, and I'd listen to them over and over again. But listening to stuff that he liked, you know, like early Faces or Pretty Things or even, like, Led Zeppelin, stuff like that, which was kind of more upbeat, I would listen to that over and over again."
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The Brendan O'Connor Show, Saturdays and Sundays, RTÉ Radio 1, 11am
