He’s been a great friend to so many of us for countless years and to get 2026 off to a wonderful start, Maxi caught up with Fr. Brian D’Arcy to hear about the songs that he considers to make the soundtrack to his life.

 

I’M SO LONESOME I COULD CRY, HANK WILLIAMS
Hank was the first man to make me think about how important the words of songs are. This has been one of the hallmarks of my life ever since. He was a great poet and commentator on human emotions.
He died at twenty-nine, and he had hundreds of songs written by then. He was discovered dead in his car. He was on his way to a gig on New Year’s Eve, 1952. He was found on New Year’s Day, 1953. Nobody knows which side of midnight he died.
To me, he was almost the inventor of Rock and Roll; it was taken up by others, including Bill Haley, but Hank had the rhythms before that. Hank was the convergence between country and rock. Songs of his have been recorded by Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, and Johnny Cash. He was the one who began to see that Country music was the poetry of the ordinary man.

IN THE GHETTO, ELVIS PRESLEY
I love Elvis; he was a guy who tried to make his life worthwhile. He was mishandled. He was the first man to be accepted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He began as a country star, singing in Sun Studios with Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. He wanted to sing songs that had meaningful lyrics, that’s why he wanted to record I Will Always Love You, but the Colonel wanted Dolly to sign away fifty per cent of the rights, and Dolly said no. I love her for that.
In the Ghetto is an incredible song.
It’s such a great song about birth, life, death, and life’s cycle, and the fact that it’s going to be the same as long as there’s a Ghetto.
I began writing about songs when I was a student in the sixties. I realised if you want to know how young people think, listen to the charts. Music brings insight into the places all around. Today, if you listen to Zach Bryan, you will hear. You don’t get one hundred and eighty thousand teenyboppers into the Phoenix Park for three nights if your songs say nothing. I was at a concert, and I saw beautifully behaved girls and boys singing along to every word. Zach is speaking their language, not as I would understand it, but as they would.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own