IT'S well known that singer Ed Sheeran is enthusiastic about his Irish roots, even having tattoos in Irish, but now the musician has released a new track called Galway Girl.
The song is an original from Ed Sheeran and is not a cover of Steve Earle's Galway Girl.
The single is the newest release on his album, ÷, and the singer, who has roots in Wexford and Derry, had to fight his label to include it.
Speaking to the Guardian, Sheeran revealed the label was "really, really against" the Irish traditional fusion song.
“They were really, really against Galway Girl, because apparently folk music isn’t cool.
"But there’s 400 million people in the world that say they’re Irish, even if they’re not Irish. You meet them in America all the time: ‘I’m a quarter Irish and I’m from Donegal.’ And those type of people are going to f**king love it.
"My argument was always: well, the Corrs sold 20 million records. The label would say, ‘Oh the Corrs, that was years ago,’ but who’s tried it since the Corrs?"
The singer also went on to say that there's a "gap" in the music industry for a folk band.
"There’s a huge gap in the market, and I promise you that in two years’ time there will be a big folk band that comes up that’s pop, and that will happen as a result of labels being like: ‘Oh shit, if he can put a fiddle and uilleann pipe on it, then we can try it as well.’”
Galway Girl includes several references to Ireland besides its name, including an Irish céilídh, Guiness, Jameson and Powers' whiskey as well as meeting the aforementioned Galway Girl on Grafton Street in Dublin.
Beoga, a traditional band from belfast also feature on the song with a fiddle, a pipe, a bodhran and piano.
