10 April 2008
When Johnny Cash saw a late-career resurgence with sparse, stripped-back acoustic covers of ‘Hurt’ and ‘Personal Jesus’ in 2002, I waited to hear if the new Cash fans in Ireland would also rave about ‘Forty Shades Of Green’. I waited in vain. Not that I have anything against that harmless ballad; I’m just fascinated by the doublethink required by fans of “authenticity”. Besides, ‘Forty Shades Of Green’ is clearly for the US market and the traditional American experience of cultural identity; for that audience it probably strikes the requisite chord.
I mention it here because Johnny Cash’s ‘Forty Shades Of Green’ is so obviously a counterpart of Steve Earle’s ‘The Galway Girl’: uncompromising US country-rocker writes sentimental romantic ballad about visiting Ireland and sampling the local talent. That the real-life Galway Girl was actually from Dublin feels appropriate: it’s an American’s idealised vision of Ireland, like the stock of Carroll’s Irish Gifts. Again, nothing wrong with that in itself: we’ve all got holiday souvenirs and maybe even holiday romances. Earle’s introduction of an adult woman as “I met a little girl” is probably just his US country-rock vernacular but it still smacks of the condescending tourist.
What intrigues me about Sharon Shannon and Mundy’s jaunty hit version is why it became the biggest-selling single in Ireland for 2008 and our eighth-biggest selling single of all time. Not only that, another Sharon Shannon duet version of ‘The Galway Girl’, this time with Earle himself, was also in the Irish top 30 at the same time. Clearly Irish people loved it too, when you’d have expected us to let it pass by as mere duty-free for elderly green-trousered Americans. I suspect the answer lies in that ’00s fashion for performative authenticity I’ve noted elsewhere. ‘The Galway Girl’ follows ‘The Ballad Of Ronnie Drew’ and ‘The Munster Song’ as our third neo-trad-folk Irish number one single in the space of just six weeks in 2008: I Wish I Was A Trad-Folkie With Shamrock In My Hair.
So, there isn’t anything in ‘The Galway Girl’ for me. What’s more, in a decade’s time we’ll have a completely different, but somehow also the same, ‘Galway Girl’ Irish number one – this time by a Brit. I can already feel myself turning forty shades of green.
