Hi people! π
Today, I am sharing with you a song from my second major faza, or music crush – Declan Galbraith, also currently known as Child Of Mind. – But this song is much earlier than his Child Of Mind project, because Child Of Mind is his current stage name and also, as far as I’m aware, the collective name of all sorts of other activity his doing, while this song comes from his very first album. Declan had his very first album released in 2002, when he was 10. It contains mostly covers of pop songs (with most of them I believe that his versions are actually better than originals), and some traditional songs like Walking In The Air which I shared one year around Christmas or this song here – Carrickfergus. – Declan definitely has quite an interesting musical background, as his Scottish dad – Alec – listened to a lot of classic rock, exposing him to it, meanwhile his mum – Siobhan – comes from a large Irish family where folk music had an importantplace as her father, known as Poppy Ben, played in some sort of a Celtic music band and although he died when Declan was still a little boy, he has a strong connectioon with him, and through it, with Celtic music as well.
These days, when we see more and more children singing from an early age in social media, talent shows or even releasing albums, people often easily fall in love with and feel extremely moved by their music, but my subjective feeling is that it’s often just because they’re children, and this fact alone feels so moving to many. Meanwhile it happens rarely, in my humble opinion, that someone would be an extremely good singer since very early childhood. Declan was almost 11 when this album came out, so not that very little as many children we can hear somewhere online or in the TV these days, but still I think among all the famous singing children that I’ve heard he is the best. Obviously, I’m very subjective since he was my major faza so naturally I think so.
I like his later music much more, from after his latest full-length album You And Me which was released way back in 2007. Then he had a break for studying and other things, and came back with much more ambitious, but also mostly self-penned and quite intriguing repertoire. But I love to come back to these early songs of his.
Carrickfergus is a famous and well-known Irish folk song with long traditions that has been performed by many artists, also such like Declan who aren’t just focused on folk music. Ed Sheeran probably made it even more famous by referencing it in his Galway Girl. And in case you don’t know, the title of the song comes from Carrickfergus in co. Antrim, Ireland.
Here’s the song on Spotify, and for those of you who don’t have Spotify, the link to Songwhip where you can find it on your streaming service of choice. It is also available on YouTube, but the audio quality is not too impressive so I chose not to share the YouTube version.