On Our Radar Q&A - Arn: "Playing live is like a drug! It’s absolutely all I’ve ever wanted to do"

What inspired your most recent song?

‘Sunlight’ was the first song I ever wrote on my own. I originally released a version in 2019 and it sounded like absolute shit. I loved the song and knew what it was, so I left it on the backburner and finally came back to it last summer. I just kept fixing it until it was perfect. 

You know that stage when you really like someone and it feels like the honeymoon phase before a relationship even starts? That’s basically what the song is. It’s like a glorified mating dance. 

You’ve released a lot of music in the past year and it’s all varied. How would you define your sound?

I love speaking about music and I find it very easy to categorise any other artist’s music, but when it comes to me, I literally don’t know. There’s no definition! It’s silly pop music one day and whatever I’m feeling the next. 

How did growing up in Donegal influence your music taste?

You know the big Garth Brooks concerts that happened in Dublin recently? The best way I can explain the culture in Donegal is that probably 85% of the population went down there just for that. I got tickets myself, and I don’t even listen to him!

My music taste was shaped most by my parents, though. We used to have these two VCR music video tapes, ‘Hero’ by Enrique Iglesias and ‘Uptown Girl.’ Not the Billy Joel version, the cover by Westlife! I was probably three or four, sitting in front of our big box TV and watching those videos on repeat.

We would also go on road trips to Waterford a lot, and my dad had three CDs in the car he never changed. It was Meat Loaf’s Greatest Hits, The Dubliners’ Greatest Hits and Bruce Springsteen’s Greatest Hits. I would be screaming that shit on the entire seven hour journey!

What are your goals for the next year?

The main thing is just playing more gigs. Myself and my best mate Aaron Crawford run a gig in Donegal called ‘Aaron’s Everywhere,’ which is our stage names combined. The goal is to take that all over Ireland.

Playing live is like a drug! It’s absolutely all I’ve ever wanted to do. I still don’t really know what I’m doing, but the way I see it is even if it’s just five people in the crowd, that’s still five people who came to hear you. 

• ‘Sunlight’ is out now.

Read the full A&R Department in the new issue of Hot Press.