"A Pair of Brown Eyes" | ||||
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Single by The Pogues | ||||
from the album Rum Sodomy & the Lash | ||||
Released | 18 March 1985 | |||
Format | 7" single, 12" single | |||
Genre | Celtic rock | |||
Length | 4:54 | |||
Label | Stiff | |||
Songwriter(s) | Shane MacGowan | |||
Producer(s) | Elvis Costello | |||
The Pogues singles chronology | ||||
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"A Pair of Brown Eyes" is a single by The Pogues, released on 18 March 1985. The single was their first to make the UK Top 100, peaking at Number 72. It featured on the band's second album, Rum Sodomy & the Lash, and was composed by Pogues front man Shane MacGowan, on the melody of "Wild Mountain Thyme", also known as "Will Ye Go Lassie Go," a song by Francis McPeake in a traditional Irish folk style.
The song references the Johnny Cash version of the song A Thing Called Love: "And on the jukebox Johnny sang / About a thing called love".
The music video for "A Pair of Brown Eyes" was directed in 1985 by Alex Cox and was set in a Nineteen Eighty-Four-esque Britain with Margaret Thatcher in the place of Big Brother as a supreme, god-like authoritarian figure. The video featured roles played by band members as well as a cameo by the record's producer Elvis Costello.