Brian Kennedy is ready to take to the dancefloor for the second week of Dancing With The Stars – but there’s one singer’s music we won’t catch him dancing to!
The star is one of 12 celebrities hoping to lift the glitterball trophy on this season’s RTÉ One show, which kicked off in style last weekend.
While Brian admits he doesn’t have a say on what song he gets to dance to, he joked that the producers would have a ‘slight fight on their hands’ if they suggested a certain person’s music.
Singer Brian Kennedy with Pro Dancer James Cutler during the live show of RTE’s Dancing With The Stars. Pic: Kyran O’Brien /kobpix
Chatting about how the song selection works, Brian said: ‘Absolutely not [to having a say over the song]. I actually love that. I love that it’s a surprise.’
As for who he’s not going to be dancing to, Brian added with a laugh that he would ‘debate’ with RTE bosses if they made him dance to a Chris de Burgh number.
Chris de Burgh and Rosanna Davison. Pic: BabiradPicture/REX/Shutterstock
‘Yes, I will. If anybody tries to get me to do Chris de Burgh, you know, they’ve got a slight fight on their hands. That’s all I’ll say,’ Brian said, adding that he has never had a run-in with Chris and was ‘just kidding.’
What about his own music then? Brian said he would be up for dancing to his own tracks.
‘In terms of the dramatic nature of the set and the technology we have, I wouldn’t mind doing something with You Raise Me Up. I wouldn’t mind doing something with maybe Christopher Street, maybe Captured, maybe Crazy Love – a little Van moment, or Days Like This from the movie that I’m actually singing on. So I would be dancing to my own harmony, I suppose, with that one,’ Brian said.
He continued: ‘But I’d love somebody else to choose one of my songs rather than me, because I’m so close to them all.’
Singer Brian Kennedy with Pro Dancer James Cutler during the live show of RTE’s Dancing With The Stars. Pic: Kyran O’Brien /kobpix
Brian also opened up about his health woes in recent years and how doctors made him undergo a stress test to ensure his heart could cope with the strenuous routines.
Over the years, Brian has faced significant health challenges, including a battle with cancer, followed by a quadruple heart bypass after a heart attack, as well as suffering long-term effects from Covid-19.
Brian Kennedy. Pic: VIP Ireland
‘I went to my cardiologist. I had a thing called a stress test. So I passed that with flying colours. And in fact, the morning after the first show, I see St James’s Hospital cardiology calling me on my phone, because I save all these numbers and I’m thinking, “somebody’s going to ring and tell me off”.
‘But it was actually my surgeon, and she said to me, “Brian, congratulations. I just couldn’t believe my eyes.” She was the one who actually stopped my heart, took it out of my body, reconnected it all up with all of the new veins, and did the quadruple bypass.
Brian Kennedy is taking part in Dancing With The Stars. Pic: Barry McCall
‘She said to me, “Look, Brian, I don’t know if you really remember it, but you had a massive heart attack. So when you came into us, you were about 30 per cent your heart muscle…” Then when I had my first proper MRI last year for a while, she said to me, it was at 67 per cent, she goes, “you’ve made a complete and full recovery. It’s unbelievable”.’
Brian also revealed why he wanted to sign up for the show this year, having previously turned producers down.
‘I’d been asked once before, and truthfully, it was so much closer to the surgeries that I’d had and all that. But also, January for me really meant gigs every weekend. That was a major part of my bread-winning [in the] year would be January, because we sell the tickets in December as Christmas presents.
Brian Kennedy. Pic: VIP Ireland
‘And so unfortunately, my lovely agent passed away not long ago in the North, and we were wondering about what to do. There were gigs here and there, but we weren’t as busy. Then when they [RTÉ] first reached out again, I went and had a meeting with them and [they] said, “Look, we know you’re busy normally, but we’re willing to be as flexible as we can.”
‘So we went in and had a meeting, and I said, “as it turns out, I do have some gigs during the week, but the weekends are now actually freer than they were”. I’ve just started [on Dancing With The Stars]. And I can tell you, it is exhausting, but it is really exhilarating.
‘I wouldn’t want to be busy every weekend with gigs and doing the TV show. It just wouldn’t work. So that’s what I thought to myself, all right, David Bowie always went on about an artist has to do something scary at least once a year. This is my scary once-a-year,’ he added.
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