Songfacts®:

• The River Shannon, or Abha na Sionainne if you're feeling lyrical or speaking Irish, is the longest river in Ireland. It winds through bog and pasture, finally tipping itself into the Atlantic at the city of Limerick. And for Shane MacGowan - the famously battered frontman of The Pogues - it was a symbol of everything he'd left behind and everything he still carried with him.
• Shane, who grew up in County Tipperary, which is bordered by the River Shannon, wrote "The Broad Majestic Shannon" as a sort of musical homecoming. It was inspired by hazy memories of boyhood: village fairs, small birds singing and rowboats landing on the shore. Years spent holed up in London pubs and squats gave him perspective: Ireland wasn't just home, it was a ghost of itself, vivid, vanishing, and beautiful.
  
  MacGowan described the song as being "about Tipperary when I was a kid... about the good old days and they're gone, and we've got to accept it."
• MacGowan wrote the song with two icons of Irish folk in mind: Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem, late of The Clancy Brothers. Both were Tipperary lads themselves, and Shane thought they might give it the old acoustic-and-Aran-jumper treatment. Liam Clancy eventually recorded it in 2008.
• The title likely nods to the traditional ballad "Will You Come to the Bower," which namechecks the Shannon:
  
  You can ride on the tide o'er the broad Majestic Shannon...
• For tin whistle player Spider Stacy, this is the crown jewel of MacGowan's ballads. "It captures a sense of yearning for a home you will never see again," he reflected to Uncut magazine. "It's a beautiful song about memory and love."
  
  At Shane MacGowan's funeral, when he saw Shane's sister, he began to wonder if the song might have been about her all along, "which is really beautiful."
• "The Broad Majestic Shannon" appears near the close of If I Should Fall From Grace With God, an album that otherwise shouts, stomps, and seethes. The track follows more frenetic fare like "Fiesta" and the politically charged "Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six," and its presence feels like an exhale. No riots, no revolution, just a quiet walk by the river in your mind.
• If I Should Fall From Grace With God was The Pogues' first collaboration with producer Steve Lillywhite, who had previously worked with U2 and brought a crispness to the chaos. Banjoist Jem Finer later said, "I think it was as exciting for him as it was for us because he'd never worked with a band live in the studio."