Danny: Champion Of The World

I first met The Coronas frontman Danny O’Reilly last year. I’d barely introduced myself before the unassuming singer enthusiastically congratulated me on my new post as film reviewer at Hot Press, raving about what a cool job I had. This, I might add, was just weeks after his band had been touring Singapore and Australia, and opened for Paul McCartney in the RDS. Yes, my job is cool.

Danny’s complete lack of ego, genuine wasrmth and constant good cheer obviously haven’t wavered in the interim: when O’Reilly walks into the Library Bar in Dublin, he greets me with a big hug, asking me what I’ve been up to, until I promise to tell him the fascinating details of my glamorous lifestyle – one that centres around my laptop, endless cups of tea, and the almost daily realisation that I’m still in my pyjamas at three in the afternoon.
But before we give the people that hard-hitting exclusive, I suppose I’d better ask him some quick questions about himself. Justc as a matter of courtesy, you understand.
So Danny: I believe The Coronas’ third album Closer To You is out next week? And that it was produced in LA by Tony Hoffer, renowned for his work with Air, Beck, The Kooks and Belle & Sebastian? Not that it competes with my week’s highlight – watching a Come Dine With Me marathon over a take-away – but hey, it’s still, pretty interesting I suppose.
“Yeah, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks!” he laughs. “Going to LA was a bit of a gamble, to be honest. We had no idea what to expect. We’d never met Tony before, just emailed and spoken on the phone – but his CV speaks for itself, so we were thrilled to be working with him.”
Getting him involved was a victory made all the more sweet by the fact that this wasn’t the first time the band had approached Tony. “We asked him to do the last album and he said no!” explains the frontman. “Though in fairness we probably couldn’t have afforded him! He was honest. He’s a really nice guy but he was just like, ‘I don’t think I’m the right man for this project’ – and he was probably right. We got John Cornfield, who’s an unbelievable producer – he’s working with The X-Factor now – and he made the album as good as he could have. But we sent Tony a demo again this time and he said, ‘Yeah, these songs are really cool, I really like them’, and he came on board. So that was a nice ego-boost – to know that he saw potential in our stuff. So we went over and he’s just a cool, normal guy – a bit crazy, but great.”
O’Reilly is confident that their third album signals a new level of maturity for The Coronas. “The band are all realy proud of the record,” manager Jim Lawless had said. “They all had a huge input into the songwriting, so this is a real band record.” Which is exactly how it sounds. Interestingly, Danny doesn’t consider the first single from the album, the infectious ‘Addicted To Progress’, among his favourite tracks.
“It probably wouldn’t even be in my top half,” he asserts. “I mean it’s a poppy, dancey, catchy track but there’s some better stuff on there. There’s a track called ‘The Blind Leading The Blind’ that we’re particularly proud of. It’s pretty vulnerable, it’s about wanting to make it and fearing we won’t, and me trying to convince myself we can do it. And a more upbeat track ‘Mark My Words’ that’s great, and I also wrote this folk song called ‘My God’, which I really like.”
Is the song a meditation on faith?
“It’s about a having a hangover,” Danny laughs. “Having the fear!”
Ah. Writing about the party lifestyle served them well with their early hit ‘San Diego Song,’ so why not revisit the theme? Personally, however, I’m more intrigued by ‘What You Think’, a track that’s steeped in frustration and whose repeated refrain of “I’m tired of what you think/ I’m not going to compromise for you” has an undeniable edge. What got the easy-going Terenure lads so worked up?
“It’s about nay-sayers I guess, people putting us down, that whole musical snobbery thing. I mean, I can be a musical snob too, but someone had probably been giving us a particularly hard time that week! It’s not a hate-filled song though.”
I wouldn’t blame him if it were. Despite their huge success, the band have constantly had to fight against begrudgers and disparagers who claim their work is too commercial – as we all know, being popular is, like, so ‘1990s.
“We’ve always faced criticism about being lightweight,” he agrees, “and we always knew from day one that people were going to have a go at us for being a pop-rock band. You just get over it! I mean we still get abuse. I get people coming up to me saying, ‘That San Diego Song, it’s the worst fucking song I’ve ever heard!’ But it honestly doesn’t bother me. If it did I wouldn’t be here doing this.
“The only thing that would bother me is people saying that we’re somehow pulling the wool over our fans’ eyes, that it’s a formula and we sit around going, ‘Oh, well people like slow ballads’, so The Coronas go and write a song like ‘Someone Else’s Hands’ because we know it’ll touch a chord. That annoys me because our stuff comes from an honest place. And if people want to say our stuff is shit, that’s fine. But we’re not manipulative. Never.
“That’s why Tony was great in encouraging us,” he continues. “We had a song called ‘Please Write To Me’ that we all thought was a bit slow, we all called it ‘moist’! We were unsure that it’d make the album but he said, ‘You know, a lot of people are going to like that song, and you can’t leave it out because a few people won’t’. It was just emphasising this thing about art, that it’s out to affect people and you can’t be ashamed of the fact that some things might be sentimental or won’t seem cool to some people.
“It’s about not playing it safe with something everyone will like – it’s about doing what’s true to you as a band. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We are what we are, we write pop-rock music, that’s the music that we love and we’re okay with that.”

There is an impressive sense of unity about The Coronas, a classic we’re-all-in-this-together gang mentality that is of the essence for a lot of great bands. I’m a little taken aback, therefore, when Danny admits that one of the tracks, ‘The Blind Leading The Blind’, is about him moving to London – on his own. All along the band’s unique bond stemmed from the fact that they grew up together, were childhood friends and were largely inseparable – and now their frontman is leaving the country. Officially. Will his move not have an inevitable effect on the band?
“Well, we’re at the stage in Ireland where we tour once or twice, go away and write for months and then tour the world. So it’s not that Dublin has anything huge for us anymore. It’s just that our time off is here. And our Olympia gigs. And maybe our writing and rehearsal time. But we rehearse for a couple of weeks before gigs, so I can be based in London and come for a couple of weeks to rehearse, and move back in with the mammy!”
So this isn’t the start of a Bressie-like move into solo work?
“No, no, not at all! The only time I ever thought about going solo was just before Dave [McPhilips] joined the band and we were a three-piece. And I think that if you’re a three-piece, you have to have an amazing frontman, who’s just a whiz at pedals and guitars or samples and all that stuff, and I’m definitely not. So I felt we had gone as far as we could go as a three-piece.
“I never said this to the boys. And Dave always says he came in just at the start of the party because he didn’t have to do any crap gigs – because when he came in we already had a following. But the way I look at it, he saved the ship. I don’t think we could have gone further. But it wasn’t just about finding a fourth member. The way we work as a band, how we get on – it wasn’t getting a guitarist, it was getting a Corona. And now I wouldn’t do it any other way – if you go solo, when it’s good you don’t share it with anyone. And when it’s bad you can’t share the blame either! I dunno, maybe in ten years I’ll do a solo album for the craic, but probably not. I’m a Corona. That’s the way I like it.”
So if it isn’t a career-focused move, is it safe to assume it might have something to do with a certain blonde-haired MTV presenter?
The singer doesn’t even try to suppress the ear-to-ear grin that instantly spreads across his face.
“Maybe… yeah!”
Though he’s been seeing Laura Whitmore for a year now, it’s only recently that their relationship has started to attract real attention, at least in part due to Whitmore’s rising profile in London. The Bray beauty is not only a successful presenter and DJ but she has become the face of two clothing campaigns as well as RoC skincare products, a spokesperson for charity, and was recently voted ‘Sexiest Woman in Ireland’. You go, girl!
It’s interesting. While Danny has always been an essentially shy character, never seeking press attention, Whitmore’s personal life has fast become a source of fascination for many. And as she tweets about her loving boyfriend or mentions him in interviews, it means that O’Reilly’s life is coming under closer scrutiny too.
Having previously enjoyed relative privacy and freedom, he recently experienced the joys of having his Facebook page hit the headlines. When Laura landed the high-profile gig of presenting the spin-off show for the next series of I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, O’Reilly posted a lovely, supportive message about her success on the social media site. But what was meant to be a personal message became a showbiz exclusive, as the news had yet to be announced by ITV.
“I try not to worry about it, but it’s been a bit of a learning curve,” he says. “You do get a bit worried about what you say publicly. With social media especially, if people can get a story or deliberately misconstrue something, the material is there waiting and they will. But I think you just have to have a thick skin about it. I think Laura deals with it brilliantly: she deals with the attention with such integrity, she’s so down-to-earth and hasn’t changed at all. So she can talk about me in interviews all she wants – I’m just proud she’s doing well.”
When I ask whether it’s easier having a girlfriend who understands the pressure and commitments of fame, O’Reilly tells me it’s actually his fame that’s helped him feel secure in the relationship.
“If I wasn’t in a band and was with Laura, I’d say I’d be so insecure! I mean, I’m insecure anyway – I think you have to be a bit insecure to be a songwriter. It’s therapy for me really, acknowledging my own vulnerability. But she’s the most beautiful girl in the world, and I’m just, well, me.”
He beams into his cup of tea. “But she seems to like me, which is good.”
We all know that ‘The Joker’ from The Coronas’ debut album was a love song to Danny’s ex-girlfriend. Given his current loved-up state, is it safe to assume that that there’s a track or two about Miss Whitmore on Closer To You?
He laughs. “God yeah, about 80% of Closer To You is about Laura – sure how do you think I won her over!”
As we finish our first cups of tea, I ask O’Reilly about the upcoming presidential election, which is happening in two days (and which we all know the result of by now). For the first time during the interview, the singer looks genuinely uncomfortable.
“Ah here, can we go back to talking about Laura?” he jokes. “Honestly, I’d rather talk about my personal life than politics. It’s just – not that I think I’d sway anyone’s opinion, but just in case. I’m just not an authority at all, I’m in a pop group. My opinion on politics really doesn’t matter, and I don’t want to act like I think it does by preaching about it. I’m no Bono!”
Last year he said didn’t feel any personal anger towards the government over the financial crisis, so does his reluctance to discuss the presidential election actually stem from a fear of influencing his fans, or is it that he’s just not particularly politically minded?
“I wouldn’t even say particularly,” he admits. “Dave’s the political one in the band, he could talk to you at length, but I’m just not knowledgeable enough.”
Over the past few years, the recession has ensured that Irish politics has become obsessed with money and employment – or a lack thereof. Given that he grew up in the suburbs of South Dublin as the son of Mary Black and her successful music manager husband, Joe O’Reilly, scored a first chart at age 21, has had two successful albums and spent his time touring both in Ireland and abroad, consistently selling out venues, could it be that he feels somewhat disconnected from the financial worries preoccupying the nation?
“I suppose, yeah?” he agrees. “I mean I’ve seen friends lose jobs and have to move away and so it affects everyone like that. You can’t escape the general gloom of the place. But I guess it hasn’t really caught me directly. But I feel so lucky that being a musician you can affect people, and hopefully take them out of all that, even for a short while. But that’s another reason why we wouldn’t write about stuff like that – we write about love and relationships because that’s what we’ve experience of, and I’m not going to pretend to have a deep understanding of politics – as you’ve guessed, from me trying to dodge these questions!”

DROP CAP
In fairness, being slow to tell the world who’s getting the No.1 preference on your ballot paper isn’t unusual. Having to avoid telling everyone who your mother is, on the other hand, is a different matter. Yet Danny O’Reilly’s early career was marked with a desire not to be thought to be cashing in on his mother’s success.
“It wasn’t that we were trying to keep it a secret,” he reflects, “it was just that a lot of people didn’t know or make the connection and there was no point in bringing it up. I guess – even though my dad is part of the record company we’re signed to – I didn’t want people to think that that helped us. Though it did – of course it did! My mam’s amazing and I probably got my voice from her. But I guess I didn’t want people to think we had an unfair advantage… even if, well, we did! But I’m not ashamed of it, and I think we’ve established ourselves sufficiently in our own right now, for me to be more comfortable working with her.”
To that end, Mary Black’s upcoming album Stories From the Steeples features three songs from the pen of her son.
“Mam has always encouraged me, from an early age – she’s the one who got me to write and I suppose our projects together have been building a bit. The Coronas had an old song that didn’t make it onto our album called ‘Indecision’, which she later changed to ‘Stand Up.’ She just really liked it and recorded it for one of her albums.
“Honestly, it was nothing to do with me being her son, Mam’s always recorded other people’s songs and she just loved that song. And then a couple of years ago there was a song on Tony Was an Ex-Con that she liked called ‘Faith In Fate’ that again she liked – so we recorded it together. So this time around she was collecting songs for her new album and there were two songs that didn’t make our album which she liked, so she stole them!”
O’Reilly’s quest to quietly become a successful musician did benefit from the subtle advantage of not having the same surname as his famous family member. No such luck for O’Reilly’s singer-songwriter sister Roisin, who has the unenviable task of not only overcoming her mother’s legacy, but also competing with another O’Reilly for recognition. In what seems to be a marked effort to differentiate herself from her famous sibling, the 22 year-old markets herself merely as Roisin O. Her big brother recognises the pressure his success has placed on her.
“It probably is a lot harder for her than it was for me. I at least had the benefit of having a completely different style to my mam’s, and so The Coronas appealed to a different audience, a different generation, and just the industry in general was completely different then. But Roisin’s stuff is great. She’s so talented and a much better singer than I am. And she’s doing really well, fingers crossed. She has an album coming out soon.”
Ever the supportive sibling, O’Reilly is keen to promote his sister in any way possible: he won’t hesitate to give her support slots at The Coronas’ gigs, that’s for sure! “Ah yeah, nepotism all the way,” he jokes, “give her all the breaks – like I got. It’s a running theme in our family!”
Danny has previously spoken about how he and his siblings used to resent the fact that his mother’s career would take her away from home for weeks at a time. “We’d always be mean to her when she came back,” he told Hot Press in an interview. Now he reflects that the O’Reilly children’s love of music may have stemmed from a desire to forge a connection with her.
“There probably was some Freudian thing in it, yeah,” he says. “And I guess it was fated a bit too – when you grow up with parents who are both actively involved in the music industry, that world is always going to be a draw.”
And so now that he’s living the life of a successful musician, doe he now understand his mother better?
“Of course. And she always kept us in mind. It wasn’t like she just left for months at a time – which she could have, she was doing amazingly well. But she always had a three-week rule. She’d never stay away for longer than that.”
Having worked for years in the Gaeltacht, where the mere thought of being away from their parents turned teens into sobbing wrecks – even those who usually spent their time slamming bedroom doors, blasting goth rock at high decibels and declaring that their parents were, like, totally ruining their lives! – I suggest that it was probably still quite hard. So will he go the same route if he has kids?
“I dunno,” he muses. “Maybe not.”
He thinks for a moment before his trademark smile returns. “But at the same time, I think I turned out okay!”
And as the singer gives me a goodbye hug, and thanks me profusely for taking the time to talk to him, I can’t help but agree.

The Coronas’ third album, Closer To You is released on November 11, and the single ‘Addicted to Progress’ out on November 4.