The hybrid nature of The Pogues and their music also forms a more accurate representation of the international hybrid culture that includes the Irish diaspora. First, as the children of emigrants, The Pogues themselves are members of the diaspora through birth. The incredibly irreverent singing style of lead singer Shane MacGowan, though common in punk music, adds a sense of parody and discontent to the narratives of the traditional songs that had achieved stereotypical status in the countries of diasporan populations (McLaughlin and McLoone 2000). As neither an outright rejection of tradition nor a nostalgic veneration of Irish folk music, the Pogues’ style exists in that same gray area as the Irish modern identity, between local and global, old and new, authenticity and commercialism. In fact, in the song “Jack’s Heroes” (1991), the band directly references the major diasporan populations with the following verse:
They’ll come from Dublin,
And from Cork, from dear old Donegal
From London, Boston and New York
From anywhere at all,
From Parramatta to Fermony,
Strabane to Skibereen…(Moran 2007).
In addition, where U2 grew bland, ambiguous, or uninvolved with Irish politics after “Bloody Sunday,” the Pogues’ more peripheral existence and devil-may-care punk attitude allowed them to remain vocal and straight-forward with their political commentary. Through their punk adaptation of traditional Irish music, The Pogues crafted new songs that both “fit within and expanded that tradition” (Moran 2007, 23). The Pogues’ hybrid musical and sociopolitical identities between punk and folk, diaspora and the homeland, make them a much more accurate representation of Irish modern culture than overly commercialized image and politically insignificant music of U2.