The 50 best Irish songs of 2025

10.

Olan Monk

Pomegranate

The experimental Connemara artist Olan Monk’s 2025 Songs for Nothing continues to hit deeper with every listen since it’s release in November.

Drawing influence from metallic rock and cloud rap, ‘Pomegranate’ is one of the record’s best songs.

9.

Adebisi Shank

Start A Band

From no Adebisi Shank music to live gigs, an EP and a Christmas album, 2025 has been rewarding for fanatics of whizz-bang math-rock purveyors.

‘Start A Band’ is a classic Adebisi rock instrumental with the band’s trademark frenzied style, with a fast and frantic pace taking in fuzzed bass, thumping drums and Lar Kaye’s robotic guitar histrionics. Welcome back Shank.

It’s taken from This is the Second EP of a band called Adebisi Shank.

8.

Rory Sweeney, Ushmush, Roo HoneyChild

Ruh Roh

An outlier from Rory Sweeney’s excellent Old Earth album, ‘Ruh Roh’ features Ennis-based Aran Islands rapper Ushmush and Club Comfort DJ and producer Roo Honeychild, an “as Gaeilge” Irish language banger drawing on bass music and upbeat club break sounds with Ushmush’s delectable Irish rap style.

7.

Paddy Hanna

Harry Dean

This closing credits-sounding song from the Dublin songwriter’s fifth album Oylegate takes on a Phil Lynott solo sound with a song possibly of a nod to the actor Harry Dean Stanton.

It’s true ’80s soul pop music, that was kickstarted by a descending piano motif inspired by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, with influence from Sade and George Michael, a surprising turn from Hanna that suits him beautifully.

In recording the song, Paddy said of producer Dan Fox’s instructions to him “In order to get me to sing at the level of confidence required, Dan would shout ‘More Michael Bolton’; into my headphones. It was his only instruction and he repeated it till we had the take.”

6.

deathtoricky

motives

deathtoricky is a young Celbridge rapper, a lodestar of a new movement of alt-rappers coming up in Ireland taking inspiration from cloud rap, witch-house and presenting an Irish take on an American sound.

‘motives’ is an definitive track which emanated from the Irish underground rap scene this year, a BXXXY-produced song that surprisingly takes its sample from a pitched-down version of Dragonette and Martin Solveig’s ‘Hello’ and it’s got a casual booming cloud rap sonic buzz to it that could easily be subtitled ‘sick of parties’.

4.

Bricknasty

I Hope You’re Ready feat. F3Miii

Everything that Bricknasty do comes from the flats, the origin story of the Ballymun band marks and is key to most of their work, including 2025’s Black’s Law mixtape.

‘I Hope You’re Ready’ is a vibey R&B track with undercurrents of synth chiptune pings under the song’s emotionally pushing soul vocals with nods to the electronic soul of James Blake towards the end of the track, yet the spectre of Shangan flats and the experiences of the voices of the song ground it in that particular Dublin existence.

3.

Olafur Arnalds, Talos, Niamh Regan, Ye Vagabonds and more

We Didn’t Know We Were Ready

In early January, a bunch of Eoin French’s talented music collaborators, family and companions came together to perform a song on the Tommy Tiernan Show in tribute to the Cork artist who passed away in August last year.

The official studio recording of the song ‘We Didn’t Know We Were Ready’ was released a few weeks later.

The song was originally created at Cork festival Sounds from a Safe Harbour when Eoin French of Talos, Icelandic composer and producer Ólafur Arnalds wrote it with Niamh Regan and Ye Vagabonds in 2023, and subsequently performed the song at the River Lee Hotel.

The song starts with French’s poignant vocals, and features contributions from his friends, family and collaborators: Sandrayati, The Staves, JFDR, Memorial, Christof van der Ven, Laoise Leahy, Niamh Regan, Ye Vagabonds, Myles O’ Reilly, Ross Dowling, Eoin’s wife Steph French and Icelandic orchestra, SinfoniaNord.

Arnalds talked to me for the podcast earlier this year about his friendship with Eoin.

2.

For Those I Love

Of The Sorrows

Dave Balfe’s song about the push and pull of staying or leaving Dublin’s doom-laden increasingly hostile city is a singular highlight from his brilliant second album Carving The Stone.

‘Of The Sorrows’ addresses the economic reality that forces young people to move away from their homeland, the reluctant push and agony of emigration – “I’ll never leave / I have to leave,” Balfe screams in a howl of catharsis, as the song builds to an Irish-trad infused crescendo.

His pain is personal, but not unique, as it’s keenly felt by fellow young Irish people, and those who see their homeland’s best of brightest people and places replaced by dereliction and homogeny.

The title comes from the Irish myth Deirdre of the Sorrows. It’s worth noting that the video was made and directed also by David Balfe, who is as much as visual artist a music one.

1.

CMAT

Euro-Country

The title track from my best Irish album of the year is an anthemic song that has speaks to growing up in the wake of the Celtic Tiger crash – a recession that exacerbated the puffed up broken promises, unemployment and desperation that came with it.

‘Euro-Country’ also deftly articulates the Irish identity of the era – a people not comfortable to completely embody their own culture. She acknowledges the mythical Irish figure Cú Chulainn in the same breath as Atomic Kitten’s Kerry Katona, the contrast also laid bare “all this pop star USA” and “mooching around shops” – underscored by the music video shot in an ultrabrite soulless American mall-style Omni Shopping Centre.

And then there’s the avatar boy for all of this – Bertie Ahern – the country’s former Taoiseach, the Mahon tribunal white whale, eventually taken down by accusations of corruption, financial mismanagement and the unaccountable bankers his party emboldened with their cloud cuckoo land “we all partied” encouragement.

That Ahern was being touted as a potential presidential candidate was a reminder that Ireland has a short memory and buries its shame and pain all too easily, and it’s a testament to CMAT’s growing stature in Irish life (a Late Late appearance and marquee 3Arena gig further confirmed it) – that her spotlighting of Bertie’s role in all of this – has been credited as a reason why his campaign never got off the ground by the former leader himself.

CMAT’s timely reminder of what happened to the ordinary folk when the country crashed is a necessary and vital reckoning with our recent past, and what the Tiger goons actually did.

‘Euro-Country’ is a snapshot of a time in Irish life that hadn’t been as deeply captured by any Irish artist quite like Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson – after 2025, now one of Ireland’s generational songwriters.