Kneecap is gearing up for the release of their latest album, Fenian, on May 1, and in the meantime, dropped the final single. “Irish Goodbye”, featuring Kae Tempest, was written by Móglaí Bap (real name Naoise Ó Cairealláin) and details the “specific kind of grief” that comes after losing someone to suicide.
In a post on the group’s Instagram, Ó Cairealláin shared his experience with that particular kind of loss. In 2020, his mother died by suicide. Before her death, he wrote the song “MAM”, saying that the idea was “If I wrote it, she’d hear it, and maybe she’d feel her worth, because when you suffer from depression, you can’t see your own value.”
Unfortunately, he said, she passed before the song was finished. But while he never intended to write another song about her passing, there was a surprising catalyst for “Irish Goodbye”.
Latest Kneecap Single ‘Irish Goodbye’ Focuses on ‘Mundane Things’ in Life That Are Often Taken For Granted
“Someone sent my brother a documentary about my Dad in the ’90s, when he was president of [Irish-speaking cultural organization] Conradh na Gaeilge,” the post began. Ó Cairealláin explained that the documentary was filmed when he and his brother were young. But they weren’t typically a home video kind of family, he said, mostly photos.
“So it was the first time I saw my Ma in a video,” he added. “And she was happy.”
Ó Cairealláin’s post on social media goes into profound detail about Kneecap’s latest single. The point of the song, he said, was to serve as a reminder not to get lost in debilitating grief. “It’s hard to remember the good moments” after losing someone to suicide, he wrote. “You get caught up in the dark times.”
But seeing the footage of his mother “unlocked a part of my brain that gave me the opportunity to override the constant sad memories,” Ó Cairealláin wrote. “It allowed me to visualize happier times, instead of being so angry at the world.”
“Irish Goodbye” is a turn toward, perhaps, uncharacteristic vulnerability for Kneecap. Often, the group focuses its passions on themes of rebellion, anarchy, and social justice. This is alongside cultural references to the North of Ireland, expressed with familiar bombastic attitudes in their native language.
But with Ó Cairealláin sharing so many details of his personal life within the new single, the aggressive edge that Kneecap consistently honed has been softened. This vulnerability is obviously not a new experience for the trio, and especially not for Ó Cairealláin. But it’s also not something they reveal to their audience often. And it holds promise for the rest of Fenian.
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