12 September 1991
“Will Galway bate Mayo? / Not if they have Willie Joe!” I’ll say straight away that, even though I’m from outside Dublin and therefore technically a culchie, this clearly isn’t a song for me, if only because no Kerry person has ever fretted about beating Mayo.
Giving a voice to the west of Ireland experience, and getting Irish emigrants abroad sobbing with nostalgia into their bubbly Guinness, may well be a noble vocation. Doing it over a landfill-Madchester drumbeat, Galway busker mandolin-ing and dumb rock riffing, less so. Add a mid-section of ‘The West’s Awake’ and a literal diddly-aye coda, and now you just have rural pub rock played by stage culchies. Is this what Willie Joe Padden shed blood for?
Discover more from Irish Number Ones
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
