Eleanor McEvoy

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

b. 20 January 1967, Clontarf, Dublin, Eire. One of Ireland’s most popular singer-songwriters almost did not get to be a pop star. When McEvoy finished second level education, she studied music by day at Dublin’s Trinity College and worked by night in orchestra pits. Graduating from college with an honours degree in music, she was accepted to the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, with whom she stayed for four years. One of her earliest compositions, “Only A Woman’s Heart”, inspired the title for (and appeared on) the 1992 anthology collection A Woman’s Heart, which featured other Irish female artists such as Mary Black and Dolores Keane.

McEvoy signed to major label Geffen Records shortly after, and won Best New Artist in 1993 in the Irish National Entertainment Awards. In the same year, Hot Press magazine voted her Best Songwriter. Her subsequent major label work did not garner as much critical or commercial success, and in early 2000 she extricated herself from her contract with Columbia Records, setting up her own label, Blue Dandelion Records. The sparsely recorded Yola restored her to critical approval, abandoning the full electric band of her Columbia recordings and concentrating on her musical interplay with keyboard player Brian Connor. The 2004 follow-up Early Hours was also well-received.

McEvoy’s material is lucid and wry, her lyrics honest and eloquent. She has carved out a niche for herself via her quite distinctive creative voice, which is uncluttered and genuinely organic.