Songbook: ‘The Galway Girl’ with Sharon Shannon

One of the great Irish love songs, ‘The Galway Girl’ has become so popular since its release in 2000 that one day it will surely be regarded as a folk song. Which is only right, for like many folk songs, it has a strange and rather wonderful history. It was written by a US singer-songwriter who grew up in Texas – but its success was down to an Irish DJ who boosted a spirited version of the song into the charts five years after its original release.

The songwriter was Steve Earle, an inventive country-rock pioneer with a great love of Ireland – who favoured Galway particularly as a place to write and relax. It was here that he wrote ‘The Galway Girl’ after meeting a young woman whose ‘hair was black and her eyes was blue’.

He wanted the song to have an Irish musical setting, so contacted Sharon Shannon, one of the country’s best-loved accordion players. They had met when Earle came to one of her US gigs at Nashville’s Station Inn in 1995, and again a few years later when Earle was living in Galway. “We would meet regularly at informal sessions in pubs around town,” recalls Shannon. “He used to love going into pubs and singing a few songs.”

Sharon was excited by the song at first listen and was sure its catchy melody and lyrics peppered with “little exclusive Irish sayings” would make it a certain hit. There are references to a ‘soft day’, which, she explains, is “a warm day with a light drizzle of rain”. And then there’s the line ‘I took a stroll on the old long walk’. “Even lots of Irish people don’t know what that means,” Shannon says. “The long walk is the name of a beautiful road along the very wild and fast-moving river Corrib in Galway city.”

‘The Galway Girl’ was recorded in Dublin, with Earle backed by Irish musicians consisting mostly of Sharon’s touring band The Woodchoppers, which includes her sister Mary on banjo. They then came to an unusual agreement – that they could both release the song. Earle included it on his album Transcendental Blues (2000) while Shannon decided to feature ‘The Galway Girl’ on an album that marked a dramatic change of musical direction.

Until then, she had been best known for instrumental work, but on the Diamond Mountain Sessions (2000) – mostly recorded at the foot of the Diamond Mountain, Connemara, Ireland – she was joined by “loads of amazing guest singers”. Inspired by her recording with Earle, it featured collaborations with a remarkable cast, including Jackson Browne, John Prine and the Hothouse Flowers.

‘The Galway Girl’ was the first song from her album that was released as a single, and Sharon expected it to be a hit. But nothing happened. “It hardly got any radio play and none of the DJs seemed to be interested in it,” she recalls. The song simply disappeared – while follow-up single, ‘Say You Love Me’, featuring singer Dessie O’Halloran, fared better.

But there was one man who loved ‘The Galway Girl’ – an Irish DJ called Tom Dunne. In 2005, Dunne invited Shannon to perform a new version of the song for his radio show, alongside singer-songwriter Mundy. They played in front of an audience at Róisín Dubh, a popular Galway City venue – even though Mundy didn’t know the song at all. “He was reading the words from a small piece of paper,” recalls Shannon with amusement. Yet despite Mundy’s unfamiliarity with the track during recording, it was this version that stuck. Dunne played it almost every day for weeks, with Ray D’Arcy – another popular DJ – doing the same. “It got into the heads of Irish people, whether they liked it or not!” says Sharon.

That was just the beginning. Having now mastered the words, Mundy recorded a live version with Sharon at Vicar Street, Dublin for his Live & Confusion album (2006), which rocketed the song to commercial success. “It was the beginning of the download era and it was getting heaps,” said Shannon. So much so that it was awarded a Meteor Award (“the Irish version of the Grammys”) in 2007 for Most Downloaded Track. Then came a studio version, which reached No. 1 in the Irish singles charts in April 2008 and won another Meteor. “This was a whole new territory for us,” said Sharon. “The song was apparently being played at teenage discos and the like.”

Film and television further boosted the song’s success. It featured in a cider advert “which caused its popularity to go mad, through the roof altogether,” says Shannon, and it could also be heard in Hollywood rom-com P.S. I Love You (2007) – “I couldn’t believe how many times they played it.” The biggest ever street performance of the song occurred in June 2016, when Sharon, Mundy and many other musicians played “in the open air in Galway City to a live audience of about 10,000 people. It has over seven million views on YouTube.” Judging from the video, it was a wild and glorious day.

While Earle’s original recording received more recognition once the song had become a hit, Mundy’s version is the one that remains the most popular. Shannon suggests it was down to pace: “Mundy plays it a good way faster than Steve.” Not that Earle has any complaints – Mundy’s website includes a telling quote from Earle: “‘The Galway Girl’ is the one thing I’m sure to be remembered for. I owe a lot of that to Mundy… the biggest hit was his version. People probably won’t even remember who the hell I was but they’re going to be singing that song in Ireland for a long time. I really do believe this. And that’s the only kind of immortality anybody can hope for.”

So that leaves one question. Who was the Galway Girl? There was speculation when the song became a hit, but it seems she was hiding in plain sight – in fact, she was actually playing on Steve Earle’s recording. Listed among the musicians is a bodhrán player, Joyce Redmond, who was not one of Sharon’s Woodchoppers band.

Sharon says that Joyce is the inspiration for the song. “She met Steve by accident and they became really good friends. There was never a romantic relationship, but they were thick as thieves, always together. She is one of my best friends, and it was Steve who introduced us.”

Sharon says that no setlist has yet been finalised, but that ‘The Galway Girl’ will of course be featured when Steve Earle and Mundy are among the guests on her Big Band Irish dates in October and November.

NB: In 2020, Ed Sheeran released an original song also called ‘Galway Girl’, a title he claimed was inspired by Earle’s beloved song. While this ruffled feathers among fans of the original (even Mundy claimed it was “a really weird idea”), it sparked a renewed interest in the song from a younger generation.

+ The Sharon Shannon Big Band, featuring Sharon Shannon, Steve Earle and Mundy will be touring Ireland in October (and promise to play ‘Galway Girl’). See Live Guide for dates