National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

It's St. Patrick's Day again and the Leprechauns here at Nat Geo Music have dug deep into the archives to come up with some video gold.

Instead of slapping up the usual Van Morrison-singing-with-the-Chieftains number, this year we're revisiting the Pogues' classic "A Pair of Brown Eyes" from their 1986 sophomore release Rum, Sodomy and The Lash. Written by lead singer Shane MacGowan (pictured), this plaintive anti-war song is one of the loveliest in the group's catalog, and boasts one of the strangest videos ever made (Leprechauns are a perverse lot, after all).

The video had all the right ingredients for success: a breakthrough hit (it was the Pogues' first single to crack the UK top 100, peaking at #71), a name director (filmmaker Alex Cox, the man behind Repo Man, Sid & Nancy and other seminal punk rock films) and even a guest cameo from the album's hip producer (Elvis Costello, in signature shades).

But the video itself is a total train wreck, featuring an incomprehensible plot line that's got nothing to do with lyrics of the song, eyes in a paper bag, dogs eating fake eyeballs, a muddled anti-Thatcher political message and a troop of anonymous police droogs that get more screentime than the actual band. The only saving grace is the all-too-brief shot of the Pogues playing the song live at

So what went wrong? "I'd just seen the film 1984 and been really disappointed by it," Cox explained to writer Ann Scanlon in her 1988 book The Lost Decade, The Story of The Pogues. "There had been so many interesting parallels between Orwell's portrayal and the real 1984 and Thatcher's Britain, but the guys who made that film missed all their opportunities to comment. So 'A Pair Of Brown Eyes' gave us the chance to rant and rave about the fact that we are just Airstrip One for the Americans and their B-52 bombers and their Cruise missiles, but everyone is so plugged into their television set or their Sony Walkman that they completely miss out on a global perspective."

Got that? We sure don't.

Anyway, half-baked Thatcher-era political allegories aside, the Pogues would team up with Cox again for the equally bizarre and unwatchable feature film Straight to Hell in 1986. Cox went on to direct Walker in 1987 (which featured music and a cameo by another frequent Pogues collaborator, ex-Clash frontman Joe Strummer). Today Cox directs documentaries. We hope that he's found peace at last.

For their part, the Pogues went on to redefine the sound of Irish traditional music until their breakup in 1996. The group left its stamp on the genre with a heady mix of punk rock energy married to traditional instrumentation, all backed up by the remarkable songwriting of Shane MacGowan. Songs like "A Pair of Brown Eyes" and "Fairytale of New York" have since become holiday standards, and the Pogues added dozens of new songs to the Irish songbook. Today the re-united group still tours on the strength of those songs alone, some of which sound way better if you just ignore the video…

Happy St. Patrick's Day!