Galway duo aim for high note!

By Melissa Anderson

Two Galway singers are among the six hopefuls competing in next month’s Eurosong – in a bid to represent Ireland at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

Previous Eurovision representative Brendan Murray is back for a second tilt at the prize; the 25-year-old former boyband star from Tuam joins 30-year-old Rachel Goode from Ballinasloe as they battle it out with four other singers on The Late Late Show on Friday week, February 4.

The winner will be decided by a combination of national jury, international jury and public vote and will represent Ireland at the 66th Eurovision Song Contest, which will be hosted in May in the Italian city of Turin.

Brendan, of course, represented Ireland at Eurovision in 2017 in Kyiv, Ukraine but failed to qualify with the song ‘Dying to Try’.

This year, however, the former Hometown singer and X Factor semi-finalist is feeling more confident and ready to give it another shot.

“This time around feels a bit more special because I’ve actually been involved in writing the song and involved in everything else”, he said.

“I suppose the difference is now that I’m kind of in control a little bit more and I have a good team behind me as well; I think we all kind of have a clear vision of what we want”.

He has been working on his songwriting and collaborating with various songwriters throughout the pandemic. It was during this process that he met songwriter Darrell Coyle, who came to him with the idea for the song ‘Real Love.’

Brendan helped him to finish the track, along with co-writing around 50 others but stated that this song in particular “just kind of stood out”. He decided that it deserved a shot at Eurosong and pitched it for the contest.

Brendan said that he thinks that ‘Real Love’ is good enough to go on and represent Ireland and go even further.

This year will be Rachel Goode’s first time at Eurosong. She was approached by Swedish songwriters Joakim Övrenius, Thomas Karlsson, Johan Mauritzson and Anna Engh just before Christmas to enter the contest with a song they had written, called ‘I’m Loving Me’.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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