If You're There – Song Description "I've never asked for miracles, or proof beyond all doubt." This song asks for almost nothing, and I think that's exactly what makes the asking feel so exposed. A…

I Remember – Song Description "Not the lessons, not the rules, just the little things." Written deliberately in short, broken lines rather than full, tidy sentences, because I don't think memory ever really arrives the…

You'll Always Be My Girl – Song Description "No matter where life takes you, you'll always be my girl." The promise at the centre of this song works, I think, precisely because it attaches no…

Betty's Knife – Song Description "I see my mother by the stove, and I remember everything." Written for my mother, and for a well-worn kitchen knife that quietly carried a whole lifetime of family meals…

Remembering June – Song Description "I never asked you to return. I knew you'd come looking one day." Giving the season itself a voice, rather than the child growing up inside it, changes what this…

Malachy – One Last Song – Song Description "I only wrote the ones that whispered, 'I saw you.'" This single line quietly overturns how most people, myself included at various points, would instinctively rank a…

Verse 1
I held you in my arms that day
Your tiny hand held mine
Your mother smiled through happy tears

3:17 A.M. – Song Description "We're all just fellow travellers, watching time go by." The comfort in this song, such as it is, doesn't come from company finally arriving to relieve someone's loneliness. It comes…

The Long Way Home – Song Description "For love leaves little footprints upon the days we share." What tends to undo people after a loss usually isn't the large, expected moments — the funeral, the…

The Warmth Was Real – Song Description "They never knew your name. They never saw your hands." If I had to choose one song out of this entire collection that says most plainly and most…

At the Coalface – Song Description "But many lives were built upon the miners' strength and name." The word "name" in that closing line is doing more work than it first appears to, and I…

The Stone Cutter – Song Description "What is built upon good foundations will outlive the hands that hold." On the surface, this is a fairly plain parable about masonry — a hasty, careless builder set…

Wonder – Song Description "One miracle. Right here. Right now." The things this song chooses to marvel at are almost aggressively ordinary — morning light coming through a window, children playing somewhere nearby, a weathered…

Can Anybody Hear Me – Song Description "We heard you. With love." The fifty years are the real subject of this song, more than the answer that eventually arrives at the end of it. Most…

If Anybody Hears Us – Song Description "The fears we keep behind our smiles, the hurts we never show." Nobody in this song is named, and I think that's a deliberate choice rather than a…

The Watchmaker of Cork – Song Description "I was busy living life, my friend. I never measured it." There's an obvious joke sitting on the surface of this song — the man who understands time…

The Accordion in the Attic – Song Description "I feel a little closer every time I play it good." He never actually met the grandfather he's trying to feel closer to in this song, and…

Maggie at the Post Office – Song Description "Not once in forty years did she let confidence fail." Forty years is the real subject of this song, far more than any single kindness described within…

The Last Bus to Ballymore – Song Description "Old friends are worth more than schedules, that's one thing I've learned for sure." Nothing dramatic happens in this song. A man misses a bus, repeatedly, because…

I Married an English Rose – Song Description "Some things in this life are worth looking foolish for, too." The comedy here is built on a string of increasingly transparent "coincidences," and it would be…

I’ve walked through factory mornings
And rain on quiet roads
Carried tools in freezing winters
Carried worries no one knows

Title: Mark on the Wall
Verse 1
Just a boy, only nine years old
Four foot tall, reaching, bold

Tommy Doyle – Song Description "The only man in Ireland who liked what he could hear." The easy reading is that Tommy is deluded — a man too tone-deaf to know how bad he sounds.…

Paddy O'Flynn – Song Description "I was never watching buildings, Paddy. I was watching you all the while." I've thought about this song more than almost any other comic one in the collection, because I…

Old Malachy Byrne – Song Description "Come on Finn, there's treasures yet to find." The line most people will hear as the saddest in the song is this one, spoken to a dog who is…

The Hotelier – Song Description "And somehow make a stranger feel as though he's come back home." The detail that has stayed with me longest isn't the kindness itself, generous as it was — it's…

Verse 1
When I touch you sweetheart
My heart begins to sing
All my worries disappear

Verse 1
If I could say hello again
I’d have so much to say
The words I never said to you

She Thought It Must Be Love
Verse 1
Sixteen and the world was waiting
Every promise sounded true

Father Flynn's Bicycle – Song Description "Perhaps the bike has pastoral ambitions." The whole joke turns on a small piece of grammar — the village doesn't say the priest keeps turning up at the pub,…

O'Reilly's Forge – Song Description "It somehow finds its way to where Nurse Molly's working too." The word carrying the whole song is "somehow" — dropped in with a completely straight face, as if nobody,…

Irish Molly – Song Description "He's still that hopeful child." I used to think this was a song about failure, gently disguised as comedy — a man who never wins the woman he's chasing. I…

The Lure of the Pub – Song Description "Every vow that Patrick made collapsed in full retreat." This is the most purely comic song in the whole collection, and I don't think it's trying to…

Nora O'Sullivan – Song Description "For once in all his talking life, he had no words to speak." Nobody in this song manages to explain Nora properly, including the narrator, who's had every chance across…

Paddy Flynn
Verse 1
Old Paddy Flynn drove tourists round
The Ring of Kerry roads

The Irish Wake – Song Description "Keeps old Mick alive another night inside our hearts always." I wanted a wake song that didn't apologise for being loud, because the quiet, respectful version of grief has…

Kissed by the Blarney Stone – Song Description "No silence could remain." For a long time I thought this song was about Shamus changing — a quiet man transformed, almost magically, into the county's most…

Irish Characters – Song Description Ireland has always been a land of unforgettable characters. The storyteller at the end of the bar, the neighbour who knows everyone’s business, the joker who can raise a laugh…

She Thought It Must Be Love – Song Description Some people seem to find the right person early in life. Others spend years searching, hoping that the next relationship will finally be the one that…

Rich In Moments is a reflective song about discovering what real wealth looks like after a lifetime has passed. The narrator looks back on years of work, family life, ordinary routines, mistakes, triumphs, and the…

Rich in Moments A Reflection on Family, Love, and the Things That Truly Matter Rich in Moments is a deeply personal reflection on a life measured not by wealth, status, or possessions, but by the…

TON-UP BOYS An Anthem to Britain's Café Racer Generation Ton-Up Boys is a high-energy tribute to the young motorcycle riders who roared through Britain's roads during the 1950s and 1960s. Inspired by the legendary café…

Our Children is a heartfelt reflection on life, love, resilience, and the values that truly matter. Written from the perspective of parents looking back on a lifetime of lessons learned, it speaks directly to sons,…

The Story Behind One Summer Day When I was about two years old – an early day in Mike Forty's life. Some memories should not exist — and yet they do. I was only around…

The opening lines immediately establish regret and longing: “The words I never said to you The words I meant to say” That repetition becomes the emotional thread running through the entire piece. The pain is…

This song is about the memory of deep love after loss — not only the pain of losing someone, but the strange beauty of having loved them at all. Rather than focusing on anger or…

This song is about deep admiration, gratitude, and the quiet realisation that true love is one of life’s greatest gifts. Rather than focusing only on beauty itself, the song explores what it feels like to…