Kate Nash: "There was always a pride in being Irish. That was instilled in us by our parents"

For anyone who saw Kate Nash’s viral tin whistle rendition of Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ during Covid, it shouldn’t come as any major surprise that her ties to Irish music have always run deep.

Raised in North Harrow, London to a Ballymun-born mother and an English father, the singer-songwriter first rose to international attention in 2007, with the release of her chart-topping debut, Made Of Bricks. She secured the BRIT Award for British Female Solo Artist just six months later.

But Kate has made no secret of her efforts to embrace her Irish heritage in recent years – whether linking up with trad supergroup BIIRD, working with Irish creatives Ríon Hannora and Ellius Grace, or dropping into Leinster House for a visit.

“I think it’s a late 30s thing,” she says of exploring those roots. “You just start asking, ‘Hmm, why am I the way I am…?’ It’s giving context for everything, and appreciation for everything as well – realising how much my Irish heritage has impacted my life.”

She credits that heritage for helping to shape her defiant political stances too – with Kate having used her platform to speak out against the music industry, transphobia, and Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“I was raised by a very outspoken woman,” she tells me. “Global politics and domestic politics were discussed all the time. My mum is angry about injustice – and that could be in the playground if someone’s being bullied, or in the global news.

“Later in life, I’ve been putting that more into my music,” she adds. “There’s a reason Irish people tend to be outspoken, right? It’s because of oppression from England. So it’s an interesting duality within me to explore.”

Still, her decision to cover Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Famine’ this year – a searing spoken-word account of Britain's oppression and exploitation of Ireland, and the generational impact of that trauma – was a thrillingly bold shift in direction that few could've seen coming.

The track is set to feature on Kate’s upcoming album, which is now in its final stage of completion. Born out of a desire to write about her family and heritage, the project ultimately led her to Co. Galway, where her people originally hail from.

“We were brought to Spiddal sort of accidentally,” she claims. “We were going to record in this castle, but it got flooded the night before. And the engineer was like, ‘Oh, you should come to this studio I work in, Stiúideo Cuan.’

“So I say the faeries did it!” she adds. “They were angry – they didn’t want us to record in the castle. They wanted us to go to Spiddal instead.”

There, she met one of the studio’s founders, Charlie Lennon. The influential Irish composer and traditional musician is credited for his fiddle-playing on Kate’s version of ‘Famine’ – though he sadly passed away in June 2024, aged 85.

“I was really inspired by Charlie Lennon,” she reflects. “He just embraced us all. We were messing with trad, but he loved what we were doing. It was inspiring to see what the future can be like, if you always have space for the new. He was always tinkering away, and writing. I think it’s really important to stay open as we age.”

Other musicians credited on that track include Beoga’s Niamh Dunne and BIIRD’s Lisa Canny.

“Lisa Canny’s like my cousin,” Kate laughs. “We call each other cousin because we’re really similar. I swear to God, I’ll probably find out that she is actually my family. We just have a similar drive and energy and passion. She’s obviously the most incredible musician – she’s such a powerhouse. I’ll do whatever that woman tells me to do!

“I actually did some writing sessions with Lisa for BIIRD, for their album,” she reveals. “I saw them play at EartH [in London] recently, and Lisa just gave me this little look when she started playing one of the songs live. We hadn’t talked about it at all – but I was like, ‘I’m coming, Lisa!’ And I came down to sing it with her. I love all the BIIRD girls. I think they’re going to be the biggest band in the whole world.”

BIIRD. Copyright by Curtis DeSmith.

‘Famine’ also sees Kate’s tin whistle skills make a long-awaited reappearance.

“My first instrument was the tin whistle,” she tells me. “I went to an Irish Catholic school, and there was a teacher who was Irish, who put all the kids in tin whistle lessons. She realised the importance of it – obviously we didn’t.

“But as kids, there was always a pride in being Irish,” she continues. “That was instilled in us by our parents. We were on our mum’s passport for years, and when it was time to get our own passports, she was like, ‘You can choose which passport you’re going to get. Would you like a boring, normal English passport? Or a really cool, wonderful, lovely Irish passport?’ And we were like, ‘Ooh, Irish passport!’ It was seen as quite cool, I think, to be going home for holidays, and to have that connection.”

While ‘Famine’ has been embraced by a whole new generation of young Irish people on TikTok in recent years, the track – which originally appeared on Sinéad's 1994 album Universal Mother – is by no means the most obvious choice in the Dublin artist's catalogue to cover.

“I was listening to it while gearing up for some recording sessions,” Kate recalls. ‘And my producer was like, ‘We should cover it.’ I just thought that was insane – how audacious, to cover that song. Like, is that even okay? And then I kind of liked the idea of people hearing those words in an English accent.”

The single also features an additional verse by Nash – in which she accuses England of failing to “take responsibility for destruction that it’s caused”, and leaving subsequent generations of English people “uninformed.”

Credit: Jude Harrison

“I wrote my own verse because I wanted to address the English side of me too,” she explains. “I was born in England, I grew up in England. I’m half-English, and half-Irish – so I can speak to things that I’m seeing happening in this country, and this rise in nationalism that we’re seeing in lots of places in the world.

“It feels like a really relevant song today,” she adds. “Like, why has the best education I’ve got about this come from Sinéad O’Connor? I mean, that’s amazing, but it shouldn’t be the case. I should have been taught that in school.”

As she points out, we’re now seeing these crimes “repeated around the world.”

“But we’re also seeing such a retaliation from young people against colonialism and the British Empire, and the damage that it’s done across the world – and the damage it’s still doing now,” she notes. “So it feels relevant to be talking about this stuff with everything we’re seeing happening in Palestine – and what we’re seeing happening with people protesting that in England, being charged as terrorists.

“These are really stressful and really scary times,” she adds. “But my power is in being able to learn and listen, and put what I think in my art. And it just felt right to cover that song.”

Kate  – who’s now aged 38 – has found herself connecting to Sinéad’s work on a deeper level as she gets older.

“Sinéad said that she accidentally became a pop star, but actually she was a protest singer,” she reflects. “I don’t really see myself as a protest singer in the same way Sinéad was, but I definitely feel like I accidentally became a pop star, and that I’ve never fit into that world. So I really connect to her on that side of things – and wanting to talk about the corruption and exploitation in the industry. And really just wanting to do things on my own terms.

“It’s so sad when we lose female artists early, because they don’t get to experience that revival that can happen with women later in life – when younger generations are like, ‘Actually, how this person was treated was so wrong.’ Look how everybody acts online now – that’s how Sinéad acted. Everyone’s an activist, and outspoken. But she was so ahead of her time.”

Sinead O'Connor at the "X" Case protest in 1992 / Pic: Paul Daly

‘Famine’ follows Kate’s 2025 single, ‘GERM’ – a term she coined to rebrand transphobes not as trans-exclusionary radical feminists (or TERFs), but “girl, exclusionary, regressive, misogynist”.

“I’ve been thinking about that issue for a long time – because a lot of people wouldn’t touch it,” she reflects. “It just gets into such fucking bullshit online – and there’s a lot of GERMs in the media in the UK.

“But being an outspoken feminist has been a huge part of my career,” she adds. “And having trans employees and people in my life, I felt I needed to get involved in this. I needed to get in the ring here.”

After the UK Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling on the legal definition of a woman – basing it solely on biological sex – Kate felt a real need to delve into the issue on a deeper level.

“It was time to back this up with facts and stats,” she resumes. “I wanted to be able to put something out that people could then use in their own arguments, and be confident about what they were saying. So I spent a lot of time researching and reading.

“Trans people are such a small percentage of the population, and they’re just trying to live their lives, and have safety,” she continues. “So shitting on them, and then calling it feminism? I just hate it. Look at the mistakes of feminism in the past – we’ve left Black women out of feminism before. We’ve left people behind, and that was a mistake. I really don’t agree that you can trample on the rights of others, in order to protect yourself – especially vulnerable people.”

And for all the hateful online comments the track has received, she also reveals that people regularly stop her in the street to specifically thank her for ‘GERM’.

“It really makes me emotional,” she says now. “Being able to give that to a community that I care about deeply… It’s one of the most important things I’ve done in my career.”

Will the upcoming album follow a similar tone as ‘GERM’ and ‘Famine’?

“It’s political and it’s really personal –  but it’s not directly through my lens of, ‘This is how I feel.’ It’s more thinking about family, and about where you’re from.

“So it’s a quite dense record, but it’s also very joyful,” she adds. “I really dipped into trad music. That music is very healing, and has so much vitality and joy in it. It’s like when you go to a BIIRD gig, you’re just like, ‘I feel healed…’”

Credit: Jude Harrison

Now 20 years into her career, Kate has also established herself as a crucial voice for change within the wider music industry. She sparked headlines around the world in 2024, for highlighting the financial difficulties faced by musicians through her Butts for Tour Buses campaign – which saw her launch an OnlyFans account in order to fund her tour.

“I want to sit here and say it’s so much better for young musicians now, compared to 20 years ago – but it’s not, and I’m pissed off,” she remarks. “Things should be improving. We have all this access to free fucking information – so why is everything so shit?

“So I’m angry, and that drives me to do something with that anger – so that I don’t just become an angry, bitter person. I want to enjoy my life. So I channel the anger and direct it into something that I can do something with.”

Despite the industry’s many challenges, Kate tells me that her “love for music still burns really bright” these days – and even while based in London, she remains deeply clued into the scene on this side of the Irish Sea. She even picked up a few new favourites at Féile na Gréine in Limerick last year...

“I love John Francis Flynn’s music,” she enthuses. “And the Hoors of Ireland and Acid Granny – they’re so fun.

“I also love Tom The Bomb [aka Tom Prendergast],” she continues. “He’s a DJ from Limerick, in his 70s. He actually started  Bar/None Records in New Jersey – with Alex Chilton and that whole scene – and then he ended up moving back to Limerick. But he does these DJ nights at The Commercial. His whole thing is clicking – he’ll walk through the audience, clicking, and everyone’s clicking back. And he’ll play Noel Hill, then Ricky Martin, then some Jockstrap and FKA twigs. He just has such a love for music.

"Tom The Bomb – that’s my hero.”

• Kate Nash plays Galway International Arts Festival (July 22) and All Together Now, Co. Waterford (July 31-August 2). ‘Famine’ is out now.