Everyone is familiar with the impromptu trad music seisiún (session) held in many Irish pubs, but since Dublin band U2’s massive success in the 80s, the country’s rock and pop music has travelled around the globe. It is a great resource for improving your English with examples of all uses of grammar and a wide range of vocabulary. It is also a way to immerse yourself in the fascinating culture of Ireland. We list ten of the most popular songs below, so grab your headphones and take a musical trip to the Emerald Isle.
Irish Songs to Learn English
A2 - Pre-Intermediate
The Corrs: Breathless
Hailing from Dundalk, north of Dublin, this quartet of three sisters and a brother had their biggest hit in 2000 with a song largely composed of imperatives. Lexically simple and entirely in the present (simple and continuous), it also uses the modal ‘can’.
I cannot lie
From you I cannot hide
And I’m losing the will to try
Can’t hide it (can’t hide it)
Can’t fight it (can’t fight it)
So go on, go on
Come on, leave me breathless
Tempt me, tease me
Until I can’t deny this
Loving feeling (loving feeling)
Make me long for your kiss
Go on (go on), go on (go on)
Yeah, come on, yeah
Sinéad O’Connor: Nothing Compares 2 U
The Dublin-born singer-songwriter is best known for her 1990 cover of a Prince song, which topped the charts all over the world. It opens with a present perfect + ‘since’ clause, with four examples of the modal ‘can’ in the first verse.
It’s been seven hours and fifteen days
Since you took your love away
I go out every night and sleep all day
Since you took your love away
Since you been gone
I can do whatever I want
I can see whomever I choose
I can eat my dinner
in a fancy restaurant
But nothing
I said nothing can take away
these blues
‘Cause nothing compares
Nothing compares to you
B1 - Lower Intermediate
The Dubliners: Whiskey in the Jar
This is a traditional Irish story song recounting the misadventures of a highwayman, beginning with a perfect example of the past continuous form. Its enduring appeal was enhanced when Dublin rockers Thin Lizzy adapted it as a rock song in 1972, and it was later rerecorded by American superstars Metallica.
As I was a goin’ over the far famed Kerry mountains
I met with captain Farrell
and his money he was counting
I first produced me pistol
and I then produced me rapier
Saying stand and deliver
for I am the bold deceiver
Musha-ring dumma-do-damma-da
Whack for the daddy-o
Whack for the daddy-o
Van Morrison: Brown-Eyed Girl
The Belfast native’s early hit is one of the defining songs of the 60s. Using vocabulary of movement to describe happy times spent with his girlfriend, it begins with a past simple question and introduces the chorus with the ‘used to’ form.
Hey, where did we go?
Days when the rains came
Down in the hollow
Playin’ a new game
Laughin’ and a-runnin’, hey, hey
Skippin’ and a-jumpin’
In the misty morning fog with
Our, our hearts a-thumping
and you
My brown-eyed girl
And you, my brown-eyed girl
Do you remember when
we used to sing?
Sha-la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la,
la-la tee-da
Just like that
Sha-la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la,
la-la tee-da, la-tee-da
Hozier: Take Me to Church
Hailing from Wicklow, south of Dublin, this singer-songwriter exploded onto the international scene in 2013 with his debut single, a love song mired in religious discrimination. It uses the ‘should have’ + past participle form to express regret.
My lover’s got humour
She’s the giggle at a funeral
Knows everybody’s disapproval
They should’ve worshippedher sooner
If the heavens ever did speak
She’s the last true mouthpiece
Every Sunday’s getting morebleak
A fresh poison each week
We were born sick
You heard them say it
My church offers no absolutes
She tells me, “Worship
in the bedroom”
The only heaven I’ll be sent to
Is when I’m alone with you
I was born sick
But I love it
Command me to be well
A-a-a-a-a-a-a, amen, amen, amen
Take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins, and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life
U2: One
Ireland’s most famous musical sons deserve an article all to themselves, with fifteen studio albums to date. Their 1987 hit I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For is ideal for the present perfect, and 1991’s One opens with a series of question forms in the present continuous, simple and future, also using the intensifier ‘too’.
Is it getting better
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now
You got someone to blame?
You say, one love, one life
When it’s one need in the night
One love, we get to share it
Leaves you, baby,
if you don’t care for it
Did I disappoint you?
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without
Well it’s too late tonight
To drag the past out into the light
We’re one but we’re not the same
We get to carry each other,
carry each other.
One!
B2 - Upper Intermediate
The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl: Fairytale of New York
Although they formed in London, no list of Irish music would be complete without this hugely influential trad-punk band, fronted by Shane McGowan. His poetic lyrics deal with the country’s long history of emigration and its sense of isolation, most famously on this now-evergreen 1987 Christmas song. Using the past simple and continuous, it recounts a festive season spent far from home, and also features the ‘could have’ + past participle form for past possibilities.
I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can’t make it all alone
I’ve built my dreams around you
The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing Galway Bay
And the bells are ringing out
For Christmas Day
Boyzone: No Matter What
Irish boybands Boyzone (fronted by Ronan Keating) and Westlife became massively popular in the 1990s, recording mostly covers. This song featured in the movie Notting Hill and focuses on the idiom ‘no matter’, meaning ‘regardless'.
No matter what they tell us
No matter what they do
No matter what they teach us
What we believe is true
No matter what they call us
However they attack
No matter where they take us
We’ll find our own way back
Paddy Reilly: Fields of Athenry
If you’ve ever watched Ireland participating in a sporting event, you have probably heard the supporters singing this. The 1979 ballad uses narrative tenses to tell the fictional story of a man sent to a penal colony in Australia for stealing food for his family during the Great Famine of the 1840s.
By a lonely prison wall
I heard a young girl calling
“Michael, they have taken you away
For you stole Trevelyan’s corn
So the young might see the morn
Now a prison ship lies
waiting in the bay”
Low lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the
small free birds fly
Our love was on the wing we had dreams and songs to sing
It’s so lonely ‘round
the fields of Athenry
Thin Lizzy:The Boys Are Back In Town
Considered by many to be the first heavy metal band, this Dublin trio led by local icon Phil Lynott released this staple of Irish rock in 1976. The opening verse sets the scene for a fun-filled reunion, with a variety of tenses including the past perfect.
Guess who just got back today
Them wild-eyed boys that had been away
Haven’t changed, had much to say
But man, I still think them cats are crazy
They were askin’ if you were around
How you was, where you could be found
Told them you were livin’ downtown
Drivin’ all the old men crazy
The boys are back in town,
the boys are back in town
I said, the boys are back in town,
the boys are back in town
The boys are back in town,
the boys are back in town