Cork, IE · singer-songwriter · folk

Mick Flannery

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Cork songwriter with a gravel voice and a stonemason's economy — spare, bruised songs that land harder for saying less.

Mick Flannery was born in 1983 and grew up outside Blarney, County Cork, in a family with strong musical roots; his mother sang and played guitar, and family nights featured songs by Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell. Seeing Kurt Cobain perform on MTV Unplugged pushed him toward songwriting, and he wrote his first song, 'Mad Man's Road,' about a local killing, at fifteen.

While studying music and management at Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa in Cork, Flannery entered the International Songwriting Competition in Nashville and won in two categories while still in his teens, becoming the first Irish musician to take the prize. He also worked as a stonemason for a time, a trade he still returns to occasionally alongside music.

The songs that became his debut, Evening Train, took shape while he lived for three months in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, performing around New York with help from his sister organising shows. The album was a song cycle built around two brothers, and it was later adapted into a stage musical, which premiered in 2019.

White Lies followed in 2008, reaching the Irish top ten, going platinum and earning a Choice Music Prize nomination; Flannery also won Best Irish Male at the Meteor Awards in 2009. Albums including Red to Blue and the self-titled Mick Flannery followed, several reaching number one in Ireland.

Flannery sings low and rough, usually at the piano or with an acoustic guitar, keeping arrangements close to the vocal. In 2021 he released In the Game, an album of duets with the Ennis singer Susan O'Neill, and the pair toured the record together.

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singer-songwriterfolk