Irish Music Daily

Welsh music legend Sir Tom Jones is the first ever male singer to put his voice to recordings of some Irish music that was almost lost forever.

The Wexford Carols are hundreds of years old and had been lost to history until a group of talented singers and producers brought them back to life.

They have now been recorded by Irish singer Caitríona O’Leary with a host of guest stars from the UK and USA.

Sir Tom is delighted to be a part of the project. He told Wales Online: “I have heard of The Wexford Carols, but I had never actually heard one. I knew it was a traditional Irish music, so I knew it was going to be good; it’s Celtic music really.

Singer Susan Boyle has revealed she was bullied as a child because doctors failed to correctly diagnose the illness that caused her mental health problems.

In an interview with the Observer, the Britain’s Got Talent finalist said: “It was the wrong diagnosis when I was a kid, I was told I had brain damage. I always knew it was an unfair label.”

The Pogues’ and Kirsty MacColl’s ‘Fairytale of New York’ was voted as the best Christmas song of all-time by listeners of Magic Radio.

They finished ahead of classics such as Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You and Last Christmas by Wham.

Billy Connolly has revealed he once took a few punches from a Navy submariner after a disagreement at a music gig.

The comedian was watching his long term friend and Irish folk legend Christy Moore perform in Scotland during the 1980s, when a member of the audience started heckling the Planxty star.

Connolly told the story in an interview with Now TV magazine: “I went to see him play in Helensburgh in the Highlands during the 1980s and he’s singing some rebel song about the IRA playing on a drum or something like that.

“And there’s this big lad next to me with a beard, who just thought Christy was another folk singer, and he’s saying, ‘Rubbish, rubbish, get off the stage’.

“So I say, ‘Shut up, you, that’s nonsense’, and I took the pipe out of his mouth and stuck it in his beard.

The Christmas song I’m Coming Home caught the hearts of Irish families and emigrants all across the world when it was released in 2013.

It was dedicated to all those Irish emigrants who had to leave home to find work abroad during the recent recession and, of course, over the last hundred years.