A lot has happened in the 27 years since I won the Eurovision
…but Eimear Quinn is STILL reaping the benefits
E‘I do like to have a number of projects on the boil and that is part of my problem’
imear Quinn won the Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland in 1996 with The Voice but as the singer and composer puts it, ‘That was one night 27 years ago and so much musical water has flowed under the bridge since then’. She has released four solo albums, collaborated with a host of artists and orchestras and sung for presidents, popes and monarchs. In 2021 and 2022 her composition was chosen by listeners of Britain’s Classic FM to be placed in the station’s Hall of Fame.
In Paradisum is the final movement of a more substantial piece called Requiem For A Promised Child, on which the 50 year old Dubliner has been working for a number of years.
‘I haven’t reached the point where I am ready to record it just yet. If I go through next year without completing it, I will lose my mind,’ she laughs.
‘But I do like to have a number of projects on the boil and that is part of my problem with Requiem For A Promised Child. Having a hard deadline makes me more productive. Like a lot of artists I prefer to be quite scattered until I don’t have to be.’
Eimear lived in Switzerland for five years with her husband former RTÉ director general Noel Curran and their two daughters, and they moved back at the end of the summer.
‘My husband’s work took us there but we are real homebirds,’ she says
‘Living abroad alters your perspective in a way that can’t be reversed. It took us a while to reintegrate. We are back since August and I feel a sense of rootedness and being surrounded by my tribe. Now I feel inspired to push through with the work.’
While Eimear Quinn’s music career has clearly not been defined by her winning the 1996 Eurovision Song Contest she says The Voice is still a staple of her solo shows. She will perform the song which was written by Brendan Graham at two concerts curated by and dedicated to the songs of the man who also co-wrote wrote You Raise Me Up and another Irish Eurovision winner, Rock‘n’Roll Kids in the National Concert Hall later this month.
‘Another song that myself and Brendan wrote called Icarus will be having its first big performance but of course we will be doing The Voice,’ she says.
‘Like every Irish kid I was reared on Eurovision. The pure entertainment factor of it was alive and well in me. It was an incredible opportunity to be part of such a vast production at such a young age. I had never been in an auditorium that size before. It was fascinating to see something with so many parts move so smoothly.’
It was, she says ‘light entertainment’ and the ‘musical component wasn’t rocket science’.
‘It helped me at a very young age to transcend the idea that one type of music is superior to another,’ she says.
‘I had come through the classical scene which is quite elitist and Eurovision made me realise that music in any form is about making a connection and eliciting emotion. That was a wonderful lesson for me to learn at just 23. It liberated me to choose a very broad path in my own life.’
Eimear won the 41st edition of the contest in the Spektrum arena in Oslo on May 18, 1996. It was Ireland’s fourth win in five years. Few would have believed on the night of Eimear’s triumph that it would be Ireland’s last victory to this point. The shortlisting for Ireland’s 2024 entry has already begin, I wondered had Eimear any thoughts on our 26 years of hurt.
‘I didn’t think I would be the last but it has been a very long time,’ she says. ‘I think it still comes down to the song. If we just send a great song we will win it.’
She herself would not be tempted to enter again but feels that the calibre of acts is as high as it has ever been.
‘I think attitudes to it have changed again. People are realising what an incredibly large platform it offers and there is nothing else like it,’ she says.
‘Bigger stars, acts with a large degree of credibility are entering it again. Even acts who don’t win the whole thing are becoming enormous stars in their own country. It means it attracts a whole different calibre of act.’
‘Eurovision was an incredible opportunity for me at such a young age’