A B O U T T H E
S O N G S

T H I S L I F E

My debut single, 'This Life', was written after several of my friends emigrated. It is about how them leaving made me feel like I should leave.

The song aims to capture how I felt torn between following my friends abroad, and remaining at home in Ireland, a place that I love.

It begins with a scene of a young man who gets chatting to an older fellow in the pub. He asks him how his friends are getting on abroad and if he has plans to go himself. This leads to the mental battle of stay-or-go once again, and the realisation that although life is slow and simple in rural Ireland, it is not a bad life at all.

T E L L M E

My upcoming single prior to the release of my EP, 'Tell Me', featuring the wonderful Emily Doyle, is about the first conversations with someone you truly connect with.

They are conversations we have with many people that we meet. We ask them where they’re from, about their family, their hobbies, their job, and so on. But it’s amazing how important and special it can feel when there is that intangible connection between two people. Even though it’s the same conversation, it feels very different with this person. You can’t wait to hear the usual answers to these routine questions.

As the song progresses and the connection deepens, so too does the conversation, which leads to more important questions and more vulnerable answers. As the two both acknowledge they feel it, they start to discuss what they hope life holds for them.

A B O U T J U N E

'About June', the title track of my upcoming EP, is a song written from the perspective of an older man. This man is looking back on what has been quite a good life, where he was married and had a family, a decent career, friends, hobbies, and is now living out the end of his life in his house in rural Ireland.

Looking back he remembers June, the woman he still regards as the love of his life. He lost her and although he moved on, he never forgot her.

The song is supposed to represent the feeling we get when we lose someone we are in love with. It can feel like we will never love again. Over time, however, we often find someone else who we fall just as deeply in love with, but sometimes we don't, and even when we do, there are some people we simply never forget.

S T R A N D H I L L

Many of the lyrics in this song were inspired by Strandhill, a beautiful seaside town in Co. Sligo in the North-West of Ireland, and hence the song is named after it.

It is a place to go and think but also to go and not think. It starts as a description of a place to contemplate and, at times, endure life’s problems - to close one's eyes and listen to waves crash, to watch people going about their day and to let the wind cut you open.

As the song progresses, however, the singer realises this is the perfect place to dream about a future, and so a vision comes to him, a vision of two lovers having quite an ordinary day in this extraordinary place – ‘a perfect place to land’.

This is a future he yearns for, which leads to a repeated call at the end of the song, as the singer longs to be taken to this dream – ‘take me to that strand’.

W H E N I ' M O L D

This is a song I wrote when thinking about old age.

The song is largely based on how I remember my own grandparents as well as some older characters I’ve come across in pubs and folk clubs and different places., but also my love for rural Ireland.