Top Five: Songs for St. Patrick’s Day
March 17, 2008Happy Feast of St. Patrick to you all!
Let me encourage you not to celebrate by wearing buttons with flashing lights, drinking green beer or by running around willy-nilly sticking apostrophes after your O’s. Have some dignity man! Have a pint (or four) of the black stuff, get together with some friends and find some live Irish musicians to support with generous tips. (And if you’re in Nashville, make sure to go to Mulligan’s Irish Pub and Restaurant on 2nd… but get there early!)
And for heaven’s sake, when you find a good pub with good music do not request Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, and definitely never ever request The Unicorn Song. These are not Irish songs no matter how many Celtic bands have cashed in on them.
Instead, unashamedly and unironically request these five classic pub songs:
1. Whiskey In The Jar
Sure Metallica recorded it, and sure every drunk guy who’s been to a pub before will request it, but who cares? It’s Paddy’s day and there’s no truer drinking song and no better song to let loose and sing wildly with a bunch of strangers.
2. Danny Boy
This song is a cliche for a reason as there are few ballads more lovely. Though I find it interesting that this is the song that Americans identify with the Irish, but many emigres don’t learn it until they get to America (though this is probably less true now than a couple of decades ago).
3. Fields Of Athenry
A song about the famine, Athenry is to the Irish what Americans think Danny Boy is to the Irish.
4. The Wild Rover
If Whiskey InThe Jar is the ultimate rowdy, dance-about drinking song, then The Wild Rover is the ultimate glass-swayer.
5. Finnegan’s Wake
And one more raucous number to go out on. Possibly the most famous funeral this side of Good Friday (well, technically it would have been Saturday I s’pose), based on the work of Ireland’s leading literary light. Does it get any better? I submit that it does not.
