Singer Songwriters From Ireland

"Limerick is very very proud of [her]. As her teachers have been saying, she was a star that shone bright from the very beginning, and I wish her peace."

"I can't find a word to say to you I can't comprehend, I can't relate to you Plain to see your faith for me Take me higher angel fire Take me where I want to go Teach me things I need to know."

"And oh my dreams It's never quite as it seems 'Cause you're a dream to me Dream to me."

"Growing up in Ireland in the '90s, those songs were all over the radio, all of the time. We were not only proud that this quartet from Limerick were one of the biggest rock bands in the world, but that they were fronted by this badass, don't-give-a-fuck, non-conforming young woman that was a little bit intimidating, but also just so fucking... cool. [...] Who sang like her before? Who has been comparable to her since? In a world that has become increasingly difficult to uncover originality and uniqueness in music, her voice stood out like this weird, wonderful, otherworldly beacon. She was one of a kind, no doubt."

"Her kind personality and beautiful singing voice earned for her numerous admirers. It must be added that the numbers she rescued from the darkness of depression are impossible to count. No words are adequate to describe Dolores or to accurately state the influence for good she has been over the years."

"They weren't mainstream and beautiful and attractive, visually (the Smiths, the Cure and Depeche Mode). I thought they were different and when I was a teenager I liked the idea that what you told was more important than what you appeared."

"When you're famous so young, become a millionaire overnight, people think you're going to crash and burn and be such a mess. I have my kids and Don."

"Another mother's breaking Heart is taking over When the violence causes silence We must be mistaken."

"Dolores is some of those people that, when you get into her inner circle, you see the spirit, the person that she was, and she was just so kind, so supportive... and in my career—in the long years that I've been in it—I have to say she's one of those people that would call me and I would come running, no matter what, and my wife knows that. We had a very strong connections in that. She represented everything that I inspired to be, in a beautiful way. We connected in a very strong way..."

"It's the same old theme Since nineteen-sixteen In your head, in your head, they are fighting With their tanks, and their bombs And their bombs, and their guns In your head, in your head they are crying In your head, in your head Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie What's in your head, in your head Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie, oh"

"I’m very close to my mum. She has a strong faith that gives her this amazing sense of peace. I admire her; she's a very strong woman."

"When Dolores wrote a song, I'd generally have known what it was about. You knew the period it was written in and what had been going on in her life. We never once in the thirty years sat down and said, 'What's that about?' She hated being asked to explain her lyrics. It was very much, 'You decide what it's about'... What Dolores also had, was a very low boredom threshold. Two days into rehearsals, you'd look over and see that look on her face. She mightn't have said anything there and then but at seven in the evening you'd get a call from her asking, 'What did you think of today?' and before you could answer she’d go, 'It wasn’t rock enough.' She was always the metaller in the band."

"The thing we remember the most about Dolores is the craic we had. She'd be sat on the bus ripping the piss out of you."

"I'm knowing this could be our last event Jaweh, Jaweh, Jaweh I'm knowing I am your youngest descent I don't want to know your pain I don't want to play the game."

"I'm a strong-minded woman, but I don't try to deny that I'm a female in any way."

"This is just an ordinary day Wipe the insecurities away I can see that the darkness will erode Looking out the corner of my eye I can see that the sunshine will explode Far across the desert in the sky Beautiful girl Won't you be my inspiration? Beautiful girl Don't you throw your love around What in the world, what in the world Could ever come between us?"

"My boyfriend—that I used to live with—was a painter and his friend was a sculptor and, like many people who go to Art College and get diplomas, they found it very difficult to be recognized outside of Limerick. They'd come to Dublin and put on exhibitions and get no support at all. Artists who live outside Dublin also find it harder to get financial assistance from establishments like the Arts Council. It's the same thing in music, in terms of support. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that Dublin has the media on its side and it pumps out this notion that Dublin is the centre of the universe, which it obviously isn't. It definitely never was for us."

"I always liked Doc Martens with really messed-up style, but at least I was thinking that my mind was more important than my body, anyway."

"One of the things I always miss, is the pub culture You know, the atmosphere, the music, the craic, all the things you won't find anywhere else."

"I just always loved Yeats, him as a human. He was so passionate and just wrote what he felt."

"Hardly a day goes by without me sticking on a Muddy Waters record."

"One of the things that was crucial for me I got from Rory Gallagher, which was the idea of, like, being a guitar player for life and living it."

"An uncompromisingly serious musician."

"The man who got me back into the blues."

"So these couple of kids come up, who's me and my mate, and say 'How do you get your sound Mr. Gallagher?' and he sits and tells us. So I owe Rory Gallagher my sound."

"Rory's death really upset me. I heard about it just before we went on stage, and it put a damper on the evening. I can't say I knew him that well, but I remember meeting him in our offices once, and we spent an hour talking. He was such a nice guy and a great player."

"Rory's death is a tragic loss of a great musician and a very good friend..."

"I've always considered myself a failure: I feel I've never done anything wholly right. [...] Everybody will tell you, "Oh no, how can you say that, because ten thousand people clap you on a night?" But part of that is reflex action and part of it is because you're reasonably good. But if you're great, that's a different thing."

"A song is communicating with people. Entertainment is a different area."

"I wouldn't call myself an actor or a singer for that matter, just a journeyman. [...] I feel I must have a talent somewhere for doing something but I'm still not terribly sure what it is. I suppose it's a talent for being myself."

"Ronnie is like the King of Ireland, and we are his subjects."

"We were written off from day one. Nobody believed in us but us. We kept having hits despite the record company, despite the press."

"Believe in yourself as ever, and your own tastes and ideas, and stay true to them, or you'll fuck your head up and end up hating what you do."

"I love digging out old records … Fashion goes round in circles."

"It's time that glamour came back, everything has got a little bit beige in the last two years, I say bring back black!"

"You'd better hope and pray That you make it safe back to your own world You'd better hope and pray That you'll wake one day in your own world Because when you sleep at night They don't hear your cries in your own world Only time will tell If you can break the spell back in your own world."

"Music bypasses the intellect, it makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you want to dance, makes you want to have sex."

"I have this massive love for the whole culture of pop music … It has probably been the biggest relationship in my life. It's my fascination, my on-going passion. … I really, really love music. I'm affected by it and uplifted by it, and made to laugh and cry, and almost fall in love with the person who has made me feel so brilliant and communicated so profoundly to me."

"I carry on in my own narrow little tunnel and we have very different experiences of life even though we live together."

"If this world is wearing thin And you're thinking of escape I'll go anywhere with you Just wrap me up in chains But if you try to go alone Don't think I'll understand (Stay) Stay with me"

"I've always tried not to take it too seriously — if you do, you dry up creatively, you turn into a product and it stymies you."

"Playing in a family band has many advantages, but it can often mean that when the going gets tough you take it out on each other with a liberty that only family can tolerate. I suppose it had always been difficult for Eithne. We loved what she brought to the band, but I know it was hard for her to infiltrate our years as a tightly knit nucleus. Musically, Ciaran and Pol had always been the creative force, and Noel, Padraig and myself had then worked our own expression around them. It was a good formula that worked well. Inevitably, when Eithne joined us full time, she found it hard. She hadn't been part of the original song-collecting days and consequently didn't share our enthusiasm for the old songs. I suppose she always felt little more than a "guest musician". As sisters we had always been close and talked about everything together, so I was sorry when band business caused a strain between us. One day, just after the tour, Eithne announced that she had decided to leave Clannad. She was going to pursue a solo career with Nicky Ryan as her manager. In the long term it turned out to be a good decision. I missed her, but I'm sure the apprenticeship with Clannad helped Eithne develop her own sound and afforded her strong contacts in the music business. She is talented and ambitious and, in the years that followed, the family was delighted to watch the success that came her way."

"You tend to behave yourself in her company. Make even a small joke about her songs and she gets angry. And she does have a peculiar effect on men. I've watched normally sane journalists waxing metaphysical when they meet her."

"Over the years I have learnt to be on my guard but, as any artist will testify, you are completely powerless if a writer has a certain agenda. There have been many damaging articles that have hurt my family deeply stories about our relationships, particularly between myself and Enya. We resolved in the early days not to talk about our private lives but, especially in Enya's case, this has often led to more intrigue and false speculation. For an artist, it is the unfortunate consequence of being in the public eye, but what makes me really angry is the way the family inevitably bears the suffering."

"Enya and her team record and we stay in touch until there is something for me to listen to. I then provide an outside view. She is a genius in the studio, comparable to somebody like Brian Wilson, but she and Nicky can be their own worst enemies at striving for personal best all the time. I guess that's the price of perfectionism."

"Sometimes the company is there to make money, sometimes it's there to make music. Enya was the latter. I would have been a genius if I knew this was going to sell millions of records. I just wanted to be involved with this music."

"There's something about Celtic mythology which is deep in the soul, and I just think that somehow she has tapped right into it."

"Eithne had been working on her album and the single, 'Orinoco Flow', was released while we were in the studio. We were so excited for her. It was already at number eleven in the charts and we felt sure it was going to go up. We'd watched her on Top of the Pops the week before, so come Sunday evening we expectantly gathered in the house near the studio to listen to the Top Forty. Our youngest brother, Bartley, was working in London and he came over to be with us to hear the news. Number one! We were all shouting and screaming and hugging each other and you couldn't have heard the record playing above the din in the room. First we spoke to Eithne on the phone. More squealing. She was so happy and we knew that sharing the moment with us, even over the telephone, was very special. Then we rang our brother Leon who was over in Donegal. He'd been driving Mammy to church and they'd been frantically trying to get the radio station on the car radio so they could hear the result. The whole family were over the moon. That evening at dinner we had a bottle of champagne and toasted Eithne's success."

"Enya never writes a bad melody. That's first and foremost her secret. As she goes along, she'll start changing the dynamics, pushing here and there so that not everything is perfectly in unison. It adds a texture you can acquire only from having different voices. The variations lead to interesting quirks. It's an integral part of the Enya sound."

"I and Nicky have got a lot of disagreements, but they are nearly always associated to music. Because we both are very strong-willing persons, we might sit in the opposite corners in the studio argueing about things. One does never know beforehand, whose idea works the best way."