Best Irish Musicians: 20 Shining Talents From The Emerald Isle

19: Imelda May

Hailing from The Liberties, on Dublin’s south side, singer-songwriter Imelda May began learning her craft in her city’s night spots from the young age of 16. She released her debut album, No Turning Back, in 2003, but her career really took off after 2007’s Irish chart-topping Love Tattoo led to an acclaimed performance on Later… With Jools Holland. Showcasing May’s sassy vocal style and retro-rockabilly sound, 2010’s Mayhem also went gold in the UK and suggested May had hit upon an ideal formula, but she undertook a radical stylistic change with 2017’s Life Love Flesh Blood, toning down her flamboyant image and issuing a collection of intimate folk- and soft-rock-influenced songs produced by T Bone Burnett. May’s courage paid off: the album became a UK Top 5 hit and led to her enjoying further success with 2021’s 11 Past The Hour, created with an all-star cast including Noel Gallagher, Ronnie Wood and Miles Kane.

Must hear: It’s Good To Be Alive

18: Westlife

Westlife’s bumper CV – which includes global sales of more than 55 million records and 16 No.1s in Ireland alone – ensures they pretty much reserve a place for themselves among any run-down of the best Irish musicians. Formed in 1998, the Dublin popsters immediately made history, with the chart-topping success of Swear It Again and If I Let You Go making them the first boy band to enjoy UK No.1s with their first two singles. The accolades subsequently racked up, as did the multi-platinum sales figures, until the group took a lengthy hiatus following 2010’s Gravity. The Top 5 success of their reunion album, Spectrum (2019), and their East West debut, Wild Dreams (2021), reveals that their popularity shows little sign of waning.

Must hear: Starlight

17: Fontaines D.C.

Along with acts such as IDLES and Shame, Fontaines D.C. have done sterling work to ensure that guitar-driven rock remains a mainstream presence in the 2020s. The band’s Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Dogrel (2019), attracted widespread acclaim, and FDC’s subsequent growth in popularity has been achieved through matching the intensity of their music with an unrelenting work ethic. As frontman Grian Chatten’s heavily Dublin-laced vocal delivery – and the literary references in the band’s songs and album titles, such as Skinty Fia (in English: “the damnation of the deer”) – makes clear, Fontaines D.C. are rightly proud of their roots, and the runaway success of their latest, gold-selling album, Romance, reinforces the widely held belief that they are the one of the best Irish bands of their – or any other – generation.

Must hear: Starburster

16: Clannad

Clannad were very much a family affair, with the versatile Donegal-based outfit consisting of highly skilled musicians from two local families, the Ui Bhraonáin (in English: Brennan) clan and their twin uncles Noel and Pádraig Ó Dúgáin (Duggan), with niece Eithne also recording with the group for several years during the early 80s. First formed in 1970, the band were early proponents of what is now generally classified as “world music”, with their restless and elusive muse drawing upon elements of traditional Irish music, new age, jazz, folk and even mediaeval Gregorian chants.

Active for more than 50 years, Clannad won numerous awards throughout their career, including a Grammy Award, a BAFTA, an Ivor Novello and a Billboard Music Award. They also scored eight UK Top 10 albums, though their profile was at its height in the early 80s when they scored a UK Top 5 hit with the atmospheric Theme From Harry’s Game, which was used in a three-part television drama depicting The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Further securing Clannad’s legacy among the best Irish musicians is the later career of Eithne, who would go on to find huge solo fame as Enya.

Must hear: Theme From Harry’s Game

15: My Bloody Valentine

Rather like The Pogues, it’s probably fair to describe My Bloody Valentine as Anglo-Irish, though the fact they were founded in Dublin, and that drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig and frontman Kevin Shields also hailed from that same fair city, is enough to grant them a place among the best Irish musicians. Their small yet startling body of work also suggests that MBV deserve to be embraced as one of Ireland’s best groups, for while they began life as a relatively average indie-pop outfit, they struck upon a much harsher, edgier sound by the time they signed with the nascent Creation Records early in 1988.

Sounding like an unholy alliance of The Stooges, The Beach Boys and Spacemen 3, MBV’s first Creation single, You Made Me Realise, made No.2 on the UK indie chart and was followed by their acclaimed debut album, 1988’s Isn’t Anything, which topped the indie listings and positioned MBV highly among the acts then dubbed as “shoegazers” – bands who created their cathedral-sized pop sounds with the help of racks of FX pedals. With the possible exception of The House Of Love, MBV became the most important of Creation’s earlier signings, and their second album, 1991’s celebrated Loveless, also went Top 10 in the UK. However, Kevin Shields’ quest for sonic perfection meant that Loveless almost bankrupted Creation, and the album’s lengthy gestation led to the band losing momentum and eventually splitting up. Reconvening a decade later, the group finally released a third album in 2013, the critically acclaimed m b v.

Must hear: You Made Me Realise

14: Stiff Little Fingers

Respecting the old adage of writing about what you know, Stiff Little Fingers turned their impressions of growing up in Troubles-torn Belfast into many of their classic, career-defining early songs, among them Suspect Device, Alternative Ulster, Law And Order and Barbed Wire Love. The group then captured them all for posterity on their incendiary debut album, Inflammable Material: a landmark release which became the first independently released UK punk album to sell 100,000 copies and make the official UK Top 40 as well as the indie charts.

The record’s success led to SLF leaving their initial label, Rough Trade, and signing with Chrysalis, with whom they enjoyed further early-80s chart success (and several anarchic Top Of The Pops appearances) with hits such as At The Edge, Nobody’s Heroes and Listen. They split in 1983 – with Burns accepting a post as a BBC producer – but they re-formed four years later and have reconfirmed their place among the best Irish musicians with excellent second-phase albums (Hope Street, Guitar And Drum) and a fierce live reputation which sustains them to this day.

Must hear: At The Edge

13: The Dubliners

A truly iconic Irish act featuring two legendary singer-songwriters in the fiery Luke Kelly and the gravel-voiced Ronnie Drew, The Dubliners are widely regarded as the most influential Irish folk act of them all. Yet, while the band certainly identified with the genre, their heady, innovative music had a strong crossover appeal. Many of The Dubliners’ classic early singles received heavy airplay on Radio Caroline, and two of their best-known hits, The Black Velvet Band and Seven Drunken Nights, earned them spots on Top Of The Pops during the late 60s. Widely recognised for their contribution to popularising the Irish folk tradition in Europe, The Dubliners also remained much in demand during the 80s and 90s. They returned to the UK Top 10 with The Wild Rover (their collaboration with The Pogues), in 1987, and their legacy can be heard in younger rock acts such as Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly, who have continued to alchemise rock with traditional Irish folk.

Must hear: The Irish Rover (with The Pogues)

12: The Corrs

Hailing from Dundalk, in County Louth, The Corrs consist of four multi-instrumental siblings (Andrea, Sharon, Caroline and Jim), and, since their formation, in 1990, they’ve seamlessly fused traditional Irish music with rock and pop, resulting in global sales of more than 40 million albums. Going platinum nine times over in the UK alone, their second album, Talk On Corners, became the UK’s best-selling title of 1998, while The Corrs are one of only a handful of acts to have held the top two positions simultaneously in the UK album charts, when, in 1997, Talk On Corners hit No.1 and their debut album, Forgiven, Not Forgotten, occupied the No.2 slot. The group took a break in 2005, as each member focused on raising their own families, but they returned in style with two albums, White Light (2015) and Jupiter Calling (2017), which have cemented their reputation among Ireland’s brightest talents.

Must hear: Dreams

11: The Cranberries

Limerick’s The Cranberries started life as a quirky, obscure indie act, The Cranberry Saw Us, at the tail-end of the 80s. However, things began to change when original frontman Niall Quinn departed and recommended Dolores O’Riordan as his replacement. Though initially shy and introspective, O’Riordan brought an early version of one of the band’s biggest hits, Linger, to a rehearsal session and she was quickly invited to join the group’s ranks.

Rebranded as The Cranberries, the band worked up their distinctive sound, which married O’Riordan’s keening vocals to a jangly, guitar-driven indie-pop sound with shades of The Smiths and The Sundays. Signing to Island Records, they worked closely with co-producer Stephen Street, and their first two albums, 1993’s Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? and the following year’s No Need To Argue, enjoyed multi-platinum sales and yielded evergreen hits such as Linger, Dreams, Ode To My Family and the impassioned Zombie, the latter an angry protest song written in response to an IRA bomb which killed two small children in the northern English town of Warrington in 1993. The band’s third album, To The Faithful Departed, also produced multi-platinum sales, and The Cranberries maintained their loyal fanbase into the 21st century. They were working on a new studio album when O’Riordan died, in 2018, but that record – In The End – was released posthumously and drew some of the most fulsome praise of the band’s career.

Must hear: Linger

7: Ed Sheeran

Ed Sheeran was, of course, born in Yorkshire (Halifax, to be precise) and he spent the majority of his formative years in Yorkshire and Suffolk. However, the multi-million-selling singer-songwriter’s paternal grandparents were both from the Emerald Isle, which ensures his eligibility for inclusion among Ireland’s finest musicians.

Sheeran has never attempted to downplay his Irish roots. He openly declared, “My Irish heritage is something of which I’ve always been proud,” prior to a high-profile show for the London Irish Centre Charity in 2018, and his sold-out Irish tour from the same year – during which Sheeran performed three rapturously-received shows in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, and then repeated same feat at Cork’s Páirc Uí Chaoimh – has already become the stuff of legend.

Must hear: Shape Of You

9: The Undertones

Though they formed at the height of The Troubles, in the mid-70s, Derry quintet The Undertones focused on writing classic pop songs far more concerned with affairs of the heart than the current affairs of the day. The band’s rapid rise to prominence was brokered by their first hit, Teenage Kicks, which influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel declared his favourite ever song, leading to the band signing with Sire Records after label boss Seymour Stein was equally smitten. However, The Undertones had plenty more of a similar calibre in reserve and they went on to release both singles (Jimmy Jimmy, Wednesday Week, Julie Ocean) and albums (their self-titled debut, Hypnotised, The Positive Touch) that were right up there with the finest punk-pop releases of the late 70s and early 80s.

Must hear: Teenage Kicks

8: Enya

Donegal native Enya Patricia Brennan initially found fame as part of the internationally successful Celtic folk act Clannad, before branching out as a solo artist in 1982. Her early projects included soundtrack work for The Frog Prince and the BBC documentary series The Celts, the latter of which was also released as her self-titled debut album in 1987. She established herself on the international stage with 1988’s Watermark (featuring her signature smash hit, Orinoco Flow), and followed that up with subsequent multi-million-selling albums, including Shepherd Moons, The Memory Of Trees and 2000’s A Day Without Rain. Having sold 75 million albums to date, Enya ranks as Ireland’s biggest-selling solo artist and the country’s second-best-selling musical artist of all time, after U2.

Must hear: Orinoco Flow

7: Thin Lizzy

Fronted by the highly charismatic Phil Lynott, Thin Lizzy rank highly in any self-respecting run down of both the best Irish musicians and of rock’s greatest outfits, full stop. A going concern from the turn of the 70s, the fiery Dublin-based band dented the mainstream with their inimitable reworking of the Irish folk standard Whiskey In The Jar, in 1973, but they made a more sustained breakthrough with 1976’s Jailbreak album, which led to a slew of legend-enshrining records such as Johnny The Fox, Bad Reputation, Black Rose and the seminal double-album, Live And Dangerous, during the late 70s.

Though Thin Lizzy were broadly a pioneering hard rock act, Lynott’s poetic lyrics and his band’s ability to incorporate everything from funk and blues to Celtic balladry into their sonic arsenal set them apart from their contemporaries. Lynott died tragically young, aged just 36, in January 1986, but he’s been posthumously commemorated with tributes ranging from a bronze statue in Dublin’s Grafton Street to silver commemorative coins issued to mark his 70th birthday, and he remains one of Ireland’s most universally loved performers.

Must hear: The Boys Are Back In Town

6: Sinéad O’Connor

If there’s one thing the best Irish musicians have in common, it’s that they are all highly individual performers in their own right. Sinéad O’Connor, however, is perhaps the most extraordinary of all the artists in this list. No stranger to controversy throughout her 30-year career, the Dublin-born singer-songwriter was well known for her outspoken views on subjects such as religion, war and feminism, and she infamously tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II on US TV’s Saturday Night Live in 1992, in protest against abuse in the Catholic Church.

Yet while O’Connor always racked up column inches, she also assembled one of modern music’s most enviable bodies of work. She first broke into the wider public consciousness with the strident UK Top 20 hit Mandinka, from her 1987 debut album, The Lion And The Cobra, but she captured hearts around the world with her second album, 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, which sold more than seven million copies on the back of O’Connor’s heart-melting cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U. She never quite connected on the same global scale again, but her back catalogue also includes gems such as her Atlantic Records debut, Faith And Courage (2000), and its follow-up, the haunting, traditional song selection Sean-Nós Nua (2002). Her premature death, aged 56, in July 2023 robbed the world of a truly singular talent.

Must hear: Nothing Compares 2 U

5: U2

Along with Guinness, U2 are one of Ireland’s biggest exports, but they’ve more than earned their privileged status. Starting out as earnest punk wannabes in 1976, Bono and company initially built their reputation with idealistic, critically-acclaimed albums such as Boy, War and The Unforgettable Fire, before they went supernova with 1987’s multi-million-selling The Joshua Tree. To their eternal credit, they’ve remained at rock’s top table ever since, reinventing themselves with forward-thinking albums such as Achtung Baby and No Line On The Horizon, and continually displaying the world-beating qualities which show exactly why they’re a mandatory inclusion in any list of the best Irish musicians.

Must hear: With Or Without You

4: Christy Moore

Ireland’s folk tradition is especially rich, and has produced innumerable internationally renowned acts, including The Chieftains, Luke Kelly and The Dubliners. However, when it comes to bringing the country’s folk traditions up to date and introducing the music to a far broader audience, no one has done more for the cause than Ireland’s premier singer-songwriter, Christy Moore. The Kildare-born performer’s recording career began with 1969’s Paddy On The Road album, and his remarkable body of work includes influential records with Irish folk acts Planxty and Moving Hearts, as well as critically acclaimed titles such as Ride On, Smoke & Strong Whiskey and Graffiti Tongue. Famous for his intense live performances, Moore was voted Ireland’s Greatest Living Musician at RTÉ’s People Of The Year Awards in 2007, thought his reputation as one of the country’s greatest musicians had been set in stone long before that.

Must hear: Ride On

3: The Pogues

The Pogues are technically Anglo-Irish because only their estimable frontman, Shane MacGowan, has deep-rooted family ties with Ireland. Though born in Kent, he spent much of his early childhood in County Tipperary, where his family made their home. However, the group regularly toured in Ireland and built up a huge following there during their heyday, and their unique fusion of rebellious, punk-infused Celtic folk significantly raised the profile of Irish culture on the world’s stage. You could also argue that The Pogues deserve their place on this list simply for their ubiquitous Christmas classic, Fairytale Of New York, featuring Kirsty MacColl, but all their albums from Red Roses For Me to Hell’s Ditch are required listening, and even their underrated, post-MacGowan titles, Waiting For Herb and Pogue Mahone, are well worth investigating.

Must hear: If I Should Fall From Grace With God

2: Rory Gallagher

A self-taught guitar virtuoso and a consummate live performer, Rory Gallagher was arguably Ireland’s first true rock superstar. Initially rising to prominence with his power trio, Taste, during the late 60s, he went on to fashion a remarkable solo career, with barely a dip in quality detectable on any of the albums he released, from his sparkling 1971 solo debut through to his 1990 swansong, Fresh Evidence.

Synonymous with authenticity and renowned for his undying love of the blues, this trailblazing Cork man has been enthusiastically cited as an influence by legendary guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Johnny Marr, Brian May and Slash. Tragically, Gallagher died aged just 47, in 1995, but regular posthumous releases, annual tribute concerts, streets named in his honour at home and abroad, and Fender marketing a tribute model of his famously battered, paint-stripped Stratocaster have all ensured his reputation continues to grow.

Must hear: A Million Miles Away

1: Van Morrison

Remarkably, Van Morrison is now in the sixth decade of his storied career, yet he shows little sign of slowing down. Initially making his name with tough R&B outfit Them, the Belfast bard kicked off his solo career in 1967 with the classic US Top 10 hit Brown-Eyed Girl, and hit an early peak with the illustrious Astral Weeks albums, which remains a critic’s choice to this day. Seminal 70s titles, including Moondance, Tupelo Honey, Hard Nose The Highway and Into The Music, established his credentials as a singular purveyor of Celtic soul, but estimable recent releases such as Roll With The Punches and 2019’s Three Chords And The Truth have served to earn Van Morrison his place at the top of out list of the best Irish musicians.

Must hear: Into The Mystic

Buy The Pogues’ ‘The Best Of The Rest’ on limited-edition green vinyl.

Original article: 17 March 2021

Updated: 17 March 2025