Janet Devlin: "People misunderstand the genre so much; they think it’s just old-timey, but it’s true storytelling"

Country music is in Janet Devlin’s blood. She was born in County Tyrone to parents who met at a country music dance. Her brothers, while occasionally going through rap phases, listened to country music like it was mandatory. She felt it in her soul.

“I remember being 10-years-old, taking my pony up into the mountains and using her feet as a metronome to sing Garth Brooks and Dolly Parton,” she tells me. “God bless her wee ears.”

With a voice like Devlin’s, it surely was a blessing. While she says she has “never known a life without country music being popular”, it’s impossible to ignore the booming popularity it has had in Europe in the past few years.

Between Garth Brooks’ record-breaking five-night stand at Croke Park in 2022, Zach Bryan packing Phoenix Park with 180,000 fans for his three-night stand in June 2025, and the announcement of Luke Combs’ upcoming Slane Castle headliner, country is taking Ireland by storm. However, this is no surprise to Devlin.

“If I can put my boring hat on, music is cyclical, just like fashion,” she explains. “Trends come and go. Like, if you have a pair of flare jeans, wait 20 years and they’ll be back in fashion. It’s the same with music. If you look back to the early 2000s, there was a massive country resurgence where you had the likes of Shania Twain, and the soundtrack for freaking Cars.”

It’s not just ‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman!’ and Disney films that serve as trend indicators, she adds. Weddings are a good indicator too.

“If you look at first dance songs, it’s very easy to spot as well. There were a lot of first dance songs in the early 2000s that were country songs. ‘Every Time Our Eyes Meet’, ‘Bless The Broken Road’ – all that country, right? So it’s definitely having a resurgence now, and then it will dip again and we’ll go into another cycle.”

She adds that there is a widely held misconception about pop music.

“People misunderstand pop music the same way they misunderstand indie music. Pop music is music that’s popular. Indie music is music that’s independent, unsigned, whatever. So when people are enjoying country, it becomes pop. It’s as simple as that. If you look at the charts this year, there’s a lot of R&B because it’s popular. Country is seeping in too.”

Devlin isn’t just surfing the trends. After growing up on the genre, she says she’s been planning to release country music for 10 years. She released her first country song in 2021 (an alternative version of her original single ‘Place Called Home’), but ambitions of a country album were delayed due to the Covid pandemic.

“I remember how, when I told people my album was going to be country, they’d laugh and joke at me,” says Devlin. “But now it’s popular, and the same people are like, ‘Oh, how does it feel to be on trend?’ So suddenly I’m accidentally cool (laughs).

“It’s funny watching people who have always hated country listen to country. I think people misunderstand the genre so much; they think it’s just old-timey, but it’s true storytelling. There are tropes in it, like there are in any genre, but they’re special with country. I like that people are coming into the genre now and actually seeing it for what it is.”

She suggests country music – and her music – stand out in a time when there are few live bands (“real musicians,” as she calls them) on the charts.

“My stuff is all recorded with a live band and I think people like that,” says Devlin. “If you like bands and real people playing music, and not just computers, then country is where it’s at.”

There’s something else special about her music in today’s industry. With the rise of streaming services and all their shuffle, skip and playlist features, the art of crafting an album listening experience is fading. Devlin, however, will not go gently into that good night.

“Not a lot of people do the whole listen from top to tail anymore,” she observes. “And I respect it, we all stick on our car playlists on the way to work. But I still like to be able to listen to a record from the start to the finish and get that journey. And when you’re making an album with that journey in mind, you can’t blow people’s ears off and be up from the start all the way to the end.

“If everything is balanced, middle of the road, then it wouldn’t really follow a journey. So it was important for me to get that full experience, and that did mean sacrificing a few of my favourites that didn’t have a place in the story, but it’s worth it.”

The singer has quite the array of favourite records to listen to front to back: Chris Stapleton’s From A Room: Volumes 1 & 2 for soul-infused Southern textures; Joy Williams’ Front Porch for a stunning blend of bluegrass and country; and Blackjack Billy’s Rebel Child for some silly yet well-produced tunes.

“One of my favourite things about the genre of country itself is that it is 10 miles wide,” she says, which such diverse recommendations clearly prove. “It is so huge that I wanted to pay homage to all of my favourite parts of the genre.”

She explains that such wide range gave her a sense of freedom in recording for Not My First Emotional Rodeo.

“When I was making this proper debut country album, nobody was making me sit in a box,” says Devlin. “And if nobody’s making me sit in a box, I’m not going to play for the charts, I’m going to play for me. I stayed true to what each song was telling me it wanted to be.

“For instance, ‘Funeral For My Best Friend’ felt like it had to be my chemical rodeo – a bit emo-rock, but still country. ‘Daddy’ definitely had to be more pop-leaning, because it is a country pop theme and mood. It’s different, but I don’t regret it. As a listener to my own album, I enjoy how it genre bends.”

We certainly enjoy it too. There’s something for everyone in Not My First Emotional Rodeo, as cliché as it is, but it’s perhaps more important that there’s plenty for Devlin herself. The authenticity of her music shines through at every moment, which makes the listening experience magical.

She’s got another album in the works, though the title is a secret for now.

“The title is a very famous Irish phrase, and it makes me giggle, but I’m not telling anyone yet,” she tells us with a grin. “It’s a true culchie phrase. I bought a keychain from the airport the other day with the album title on it, so that cashier is probably one of the only people outside of my band who knows what the album is called.”

• Not My First Emotional Rodeo is out now.