Kneecap‘s Móglaí Bap has opened up about penning the new song ‘Irish Goodbye’ – sharing that it was written as he struggled to “confront the reality” of his mother’s death by suicide.
The Irish hip-hop trio are set to release the track tomorrow (Tuesday April 28), and it will be the latest track to be shared from their forthcoming album ‘Fenian’, which is set to drop on Friday (May 1) via Heavenly Recordings. Already the album has been previewed with the title track, the electric ‘Smugglers & Scholars’ and ‘Liars Tale’, which hit out at Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Announcing ‘Irish Goodbye’, which features Kae Tempest, the band’s Móglaí Bap – real name Naoise Ó Cairealláin – took to social media to share that he wrote the lyrics following the death of his mother in 2020, and his struggle to come to terms with the “reality of what has happened”.
He began the post by saying he “never meant to write a song” about her passing, and adding that he and his brother recently watched a documentary about his father in the ‘90s – at the time when he was president of the democratic forum for the Irish-speaking community, Conradh na Gaeilge – which was “the first time I saw my Ma in a video”.
“She was happy,” Bap wrote, adding that seeing her like that “had a profound effect on me” and left him feeling “so emotional”.
Sharing details of her death, the rapper recalled writing a song about her before, 2020’s ‘MAM’, which he wrote at the time when “she was sick at the time with depression”.
“The idea I had in my head with ‘MAM’ was, if I wrote it, she’d hear it, and maybe she’d feel her worth, because when you suffer from depression, you can’t see your own value,” he continued. “At that time, we went for a walk and I told her I had written a song for her, but that it wasn’t completely finished yet, so I’d wait until the next week to play it for her. But by then it was too late.”
“Suicide is hard. And when someone is sick with depression and dies by suicide, it’s hard to remember the good moments. You get caught up in the dark times,” he continued, adding that ‘Irish Goodbye’ is about “the mundane things me and my Ma did together” as he “never realised it was the day to day stuff I would miss when she was gone”.
“It’s all the small things that you miss. Watching that footage of her and writing this song, unlocked a part of my brain that gave me the opportunity to override the constant sad memories. It allowed me visualise happier times, instead of being so angry at the world,” the post read, also sharing that the music was written by producer owner Dan Carey, and sees Tempest deliver “something so vulnerable and emotional”.
Bap went on to share how he found it “hard to confront the reality of what has happened”, and battling with conflicting feelings of anger, shame and guilt as he navigated this “specific kind of grief”.
“You feel like you’re carrying this weird other burden… It’s a very hard conversation to have. Who the fuck wants to talk about it, really? Death is depressing enough,” he wrote.
“But we need to talk about it, because we have to alleviate that extra burden of shame and guilt on top of the burden of grief. You can’t change what happened. You’re not necessarily able to save people from themselves.”
The rapper then explained that it took “years” for him to come to terms with his mother’s death, and added that it was therapy that was “the thing that helped” him most.
“A lot of our parents’ generation don’t believe in therapy. But we’re different. We can ask for help, we should ask for help, and there should be services there for us to get help,” he shared, also adding that he hopes the new single will offer people struggling with grief “some sort of relief”.
“You can’t carry this stuff around with you and blame yourself. It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. It’s about the process of dealing with it. And you can deal with it. You can.”
As well as releasing new music, Kneecap also recently performed in Cuba on the Nuestra América Convoy with Jeremy Corbyn, and spoke about the “real issue” of anti-Semitism, reaffirming that they are “against discrimination in any form”.
More recently, they responded to Sharon Osbourne agreeing to attend Tommy Robinson’s anti-immigration march, joined a campaign protesting an upcoming Ireland v Israel football fixture, and become one of the many artists urging fans to boycott this year’s Eurovision Song Contest unless Israel is banned from participating.
As for live shows, the trio have a huge number of tour dates coming up across the UK and Europe this summer, including slots at Crystal Palace Park in London in June – their biggest headline show to date – and festival slots at Primavera, Open’er, Roskilde, Reading & Leeds, and more. Visit here for tickets.
