Ireland and Northern Ireland's 15 Greatest Musical Exports

One’s personal frame of reference to Bob Geldof likely has a great deal to do with your age. For instance, if you were around circa 1984-1985, then you probably know him as much for his work on Band Aid and Live Aid as you do anything else. But, of course, prior to that, Geldof had already done plenty, and first and foremost amongst his list of accomplishments was fronting the Boomtown Rats, the band that brought you “I Don’t Like Mondays” and “Rat Trap.” Mind you, he also starred as Pink in Pink Floyd – The Wall, but it’s his own music – by which we mean the Rats and his handful of solo albums – that’s made him one of the most notable Irish musicians of the past several decades. And if for some reason you’re indifferent to him... Well, that’s okay: he’s got a song for that, too. – Will Harris

Irish or otherwise, anyone who possesses the ability to deftly bounce between acoustic covers of ABBA (“Dancing Queen”), The Cure (“In Between Days”), and LL Cool J (“I Need Love”) is someone who deserves your attention, but it helps that Luka Bloom has been doing this for 55 years at this point. By the time he was 14, Bloom – born Kevin Barry Moore – was already on the road, supporting his brother, fellow singer-songwriter Christy Moore, at folk clubs around the UK, releasing his debut album, Treaty Stone, in 1979. It was after a move to the US in 1987 that he adopted the moniker Luka Bloom, borrowing the first name from a Suzanne Vega song and the last name from the main character in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Our man Luka has released a few dozen albums over the years, filled with plenty of original material on top of the lucky songs that’ve been fortunate enough to have been interpreted by him. Although he may not have had the commercial success that he deserves, he’s gotten plenty of well-warranted acclaim and he’s still out there playing even now. – W.H.

Armed with jangly guitars, post-punk beats and the sweeping, ethereal vocals of frontperson Dolores O’Riordan, this quintet from Limerick became worldwide alternative rock darlings right from the get-go. From the impossibly tender delivery of “Linger” to the hard-hitting yodel of “Zombie,” the band delivered a quiet force of political awareness couched in O’Riordan’s distinctively accented delivery that never overshadowed the message of peace and healing. Tragically, the singer’s passing in 2014 at age 46 from an accidental bathtub drowning silenced a voice that still had much to express. – Amy Hughes

It’s arguable that without the Ronnie Drew Ballad Group, few of the other bands in this list would even exist. Formed in 1962 around O’Donoghue’s pub in Ireland’s capital, the name change came after a reading of the James Joyce short story collection of the same name. Over a 60 year career in which they not only kept traditional Irish folk music alive but made it actively cool, the Dubliners became an influence on just about every major act to come out of Ireland. Their legacy can be neatly summed up in the 20-year gap between their two highest U.K. charting singles – 1967’s "Seven Drunken Nights" (No. 7) and the Pogues collaboration “The Irish Rover," which reached No. 8 in 1987. – Dominic Utton

The D.C. stands for “Dublin City”, and if Grian Chatten’s noisy five-piece are one of the most thrilling bands coming out of anywhere right now, they’re also inimitably and fiercely grounded in their Irish roots. From Chatten’s distinctive Skerries accent to the traditional melodies lurking behind the twin guitar attack – plus the “only in Ireland” nugget that the band initially bonded over a mutual love of W. B. Yeats – Fontaines not only evoke the ragged romance of the Emerald Isle, but also capture some of the dark magic lurking beneath the surface too. – D.U.

Thought the Frames are best known to most Americans for frontman Glen Hansard’s extracurricular activities (a small role in The Commitments, a huge role in Once, and a joyfully tearjerking appearance at Shane MacGowan’s funeral late last year), the band’s late-'90s/early-'00s heyday offers plenty of gems to unearth. An ever-shifting lineup (filmmaker John Carney was once a member) and ramshackle style gave the band's music an off-the-cuff charm, but the Frames had serious range, and albums like For the Birds and Fitzcarraldo deserve to be better known outside the band's homeland than they are. – Andrew Barker

Simultaneously one of the loudest and most delicate bands in rock history, the Dublin-founded My Bloody Valentine left an incalculable impact on thousands of guitar groups that followed in their wake. Capable of summoning head-spinning varieties of feedback and applying them with painterly precision, guitarist Kevin Shields almost single-handedly created the shoegaze genre, opening up a whole new universe of possibilities for the instrument. Music journalist John Doran once compared the sound of the band’s 1991 masterpiece Loveless to “a mermaid falling into a black hole,” and that description might actually understate its terrifying beauty. – A.B.

The brilliant, enigmatic Sinéad O’Connor never seemed at rest within herself. Perhaps it was this restlessness, coupled with her fearless beliefs (whether you agreed with them or not), that made her one of the most provocative and honest musicians to come out of Ireland. Her stands on such issues as gender non-conformity were decades ahead of their time, and for that she was scrutinized and bullied by much of the music industry, both in the U.K. and the U.S. Her peerless and fearless voice was always raised in support of other artists and marginalized communities, and it will continue to echo for long after her death last July at age 56. – A.H.

The Belfast group had to contend with accusations that they were merely Northern Ireland’s answer to the Clash in their early days, but time has been extremely kind to Stiff Little Fingers. The band’s 1979 debut, Inflammable Material, remains a five-star classic – a clear-eyed yet surprisingly uncynical dispatch from a time of tragic violence in the group’s homeland, moving from rabble-rousing punk to twisted 1950s balladry and even an improbably successful Bob Marley cover that's as much indebted to the music of Cologne as it is to the music of Kingston. Follow-ups Nobody’s Heroes and Go for It were almost as good, and the group has continued to conjure up a glorious racket well into the current millennium, with 2003’s Guitar and Drum a particular standout. – A.B.

One of the great shoulda-beens of the late 1960s, the Cork-founded power trio Taste had all the dynamism and chops to rival contemporaries like Cream. Yet they only managed to release two albums, to adequate U.K success and virtually no Stateside traction, before splitting up. Frontman Rory Gallagher, however, enjoyed much longer notoriety as your-favorite-guitarist's-favorite-guitarist: to call him the Irish Hendrix would be reductive, perhaps, but not inaccurate. – A.B.

Easily the most important early rock icon to emerge from the Emerald Isle, Van Morrison was the breakout star of Them, and his distinctive sneering delivery propelled their 1964 song “Gloria” (the B-side of “Baby Please Don’t Go”) into the repertoires of every wanna be rock and roll kid thrashing it out in the family garage. With subsequent singles “Here Comes The Night” and “Mystic Eyes” the group rode on the coattails of the British Invasion, hitting U.S. shores in July 1966 with not only a tour but a residency at LA’s famed Whiskey A Go Go. It was at this juncture that Morrison’s unrelated namesake Jim Morrison of the Doors, observed the fiery Belfast native up close (as a support act), and adapted his offbeat, intense stage presence. Despite that influence (and innumerable covers of “Gloria”), Them disbanded in 1967. Morrison did pretty well for himself in the decades that followed, however. – A.H.

Formed in Northern Ireland in 1989 by guitarist/vocalist Andy Cairns and drummer/vocalist Fyfe Ewing, and then joined by bassist Michael McKeegan after recording their first demo, Therapy? signed to A&M in 1992 and immediately started working their way into the UK and Irish charts with their mixture of punk, hard rock and memorable hooks. The band scored hits with singles like “Screamager,” “Turn,” “Opal Mantra,” and “Nowhere” all going top 20 in the UK and top 10 in Ireland. Heck, they even took a cover of Husker Du’s incredibly dark track “Diane” to No. 20 in Ireland and No. 26 in the UK, although to be fair, they did have to do an alternate version with some of the song's more chilling lyrics removed. Although the band’s commercial success has wavered a bit over the years, resulting in a shift into being indie artists, they’ve nonetheless continued to put out new albums on a regular basis, and their latest, 2023’s Hard Cold Fire, took them back into the top 40, hitting No. 29 on the UK Albums chart. – W.H.

A few years back, Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” became something of an ironic meme on social media. This was irritating for multiple reasons. Firstly, “The Boys Are Back in Town” is a great song. And secondly, Thin Lizzy have a solid dozen songs that are even better. Driven by the sly charisma of Dublin-raised bassist-singer Phil Lynott, Lizzy were a profound influence on everyone from Iron Maiden and Metallica to the Smashing Pumpkins and Belle & Sebastian, tackling balls-out rockers, R&B jams, sensitive soft rock anthems, souped-up Irish traditionals and even blasts of proto-thrash metal with equal aplomb during their 1970s heyday. – A.B.

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Oh come on, we couldn’t exactly have left them off. Although Bono & Co.’s messianic bombast and corporate-friendly omnipresence has turned off some fans in recent years, the superstar group had an utterly unimpeachable run for the better part of three decades. And for all the (deserved) love that's been showered on their commercial juggernauts The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, U2 had just as many moments of brilliance on their less-celebrated works, from the infectious post-punk of Boy to the ironic, electro-spiked indulgences of Pop. Everyone decides they’re too cool for U2 at one point or another. Almost everyone eventually comes crawling back. – A.B.

Derry’s finest may have been making their righteous racket in the shadow of the Troubles, but you wouldn’t have thought it to listen to them. Their joyous three-minute, three-chord thrashouts dealt almost exclusively with the highs and lows of adolescent life, in all its delirious “another girl in the neighborhood” highs and angsty “he always beat me at Subbuteo” lows… and were elevated to greatness not only by the soulful depth of Fergal Sharkey’s voice, but also by a deceptively simple and instantly catchy melodic attack. – D.U.