"It’s been the lowest of the low, and the highest of the high for me,” Kiera Dignam reflects. “The total extreme on both ends. It’s amazing that I finally got my album out. But it’s bittersweet – because he’s not here.”

The Dublin singer is looking back on 2023 – a year that brought epic milestone moments in her career, with the release of her long-awaited debut album, as well as immense loss, following the death of her father, Aslan legend Christy Dignam, in June. Her professional success has meant that she’s busier than she’s ever been, but she’s grateful for the distraction of the heavy workload. It’s a way of “keeping in full-blown denial,” she tells me.

Of course, Kiera’s debut LP – the playfully titled Nepo Baby, in reference to the internet’s favourite word for the children of the famous – has been years in the making. Featuring tracks penned by American heavy-hitters like Lori McKenna (who has credits on the A Star Is Born soundtrack), Nepo Baby was in its early stages when the first lockdown was introduced. The Don Mescall-produced album was subsequently recorded throughout the pandemic, with Kiera and her husband/bandmate Darren Moran working remotely with a star-studded cast of Nashville-based session musicians.

“It was madness, but I kept working,” she recalls. “Then, this time last year, my dad got really sick, so I just put everything on hold. Everything was ready to go, but I wasn’t ready, because we obviously had other priorities.

“My dad wanted us to be there when he passed away, and we got that,” she continues. “That was obviously the most important thing for us. But when he passed, I said, ‘This is something I need to focus on, to get it out there, and give me a job to do.’”

Although it’s her debut album, Kiera has been playing live on the corporate circuit for decades – having first embarked on a career in music as a young teenager. But having a famous surname will always draw scepticism from certain people, she reckons.

“I’ve worked so hard, since I was 13, trying to get out there and make my own name,” she tells me. “I wouldn’t even let my dad come to gigs, because I didn’t want it to be about that. But no matter what, you always get the nepotism thing thrown at you. Eve Hewson had spoken about it in a couple of interviews and tweets. And I thought, ‘Fair play to her. Laugh at it!’”

Which ultimately inspired Kiera’s own album’s tongue-in-cheek title.

“I was thinking, ‘Why not be in on the joke?’” she resumes. “People are going to say it – so if I’m saying it with them, who’s laughing, really?”

In her younger years, Kiera tells me that she initially kept her singing talents hidden from her parents.

“My mam discovered my singing first, because she caught me singing,” she laughs. “I was very shy, and I wouldn’t sing in front of anybody. But she kept saying to my dad, ‘Kiera can sing!’ And my dad kind of thought, ‘Yeah, okay…’ You know the way every mother thinks their child is great, when they’re not?!

“But we went away on holidays when I was around 13, and I got up and sang,” she continues. “And my dad was in floods of tears. He encouraged me from there. He was obviously aware of the business, and how hard it can be, especially with how quiet and shy I was. So he prepared me for that – because you do have to have a thick skin. I’m still trying to grow that!”

Would Kiera be wary of any of her own three children trying to follow her into the music business?

“I would be,” she nods. “Things were so different when I started. There wasn’t the internet, so although you could get knocks back then, it’s so much harder now. Everything’s about image and things like that – it’s not about your voice. That’s something I still struggle with.

“But we have a rule in our house that the kids have to learn four chords on either piano or guitar,” she adds. “If they never do anything with it, it’s fine – but that’s the rule!”

Kiera Dignam. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

While Kiera also grew up in a musical household, her connection with music was a deeply personal one, serving as an essential escape from childhood bullying.

“I was painfully shy as a kid,” she says. “Music was my outlet. Even now, it’s my therapy. As a kid, at times when I wouldn’t have had a lot of friends, I could sit with a radio, and relate to certain songs. That was my way through it.”

Those years spent sitting by the radio also left her with an eclectic taste in music, which she made sure to showcase throughout Nepo Baby.

“This being my debut album, I didn’t want to be put in one box – like pop or rock or R&B,” she explains. “So there’s a little bit of all the music that I like. Maybe my next album will be full-on rap, who knows?! But I didn’t want to just appeal to one age group, or one genre – or one gender, even.”

Outside of her album release, there were other special career highs for Kiera in 2023.

“Being on stages with people I look up to and admire, like Imelda May, has been amazing,” she says. “I sang with her during the summer in the Iveagh Gardens. She was on the album with my dad, The Man Who Stayed Alive, and we’d spoken back and forth over the last couple of years. She was a great support to me, and she reached out to me when he died.

“It was supposed to be a duet,” Kiera says of her appearance at the Iveagh Gardens gig. “But she just stood back and was like, ‘Take it!’ I thought that was amazing, for her to trust me, and hand me a microphone to sing to her crowd. And they were absolutely her crowd – a Dublin crowd!”

Kiera also got to celebrate her dad with a special tribute at Dalymount Park for Bohemians FC, just a few weeks after his death. The club also launched a special jersey to honour Christy, with sales donated to St Francis Hospice.

“They’d said they wanted to do the jerseys, which we were blown away by, because they said we could make €10,000 for this,” she recalls. “I thought that would be amazing for the hospice, because we could never repay them for the help that they gave us.

“They came back then and asked, ‘Would Kiera sing in Dalymount?’” she continues. “I was like, ‘No, not a chance in hell!’ But then I thought it would be a bit selfish of me to say no, when they were doing all this with the jerseys in my dad’s name, for such a good cause. So I just went on autopilot. I switched off and I sang. And they ended up raising over €140,000, which was just colossal.”

❤️🖤 St Francis Hospice, Bohemian Football Club, the Dignam family, Aslan and Des Kelly Interiors wish to express our gratitude to everyone who helped raise €141,976 by purchasing our one-off fundraising jersey in memory of Christy Dignam: https://t.co/E96iNfpONJ pic.twitter.com/iSwtj7s5jJ

— Bohemian Football Club (@bfcdublin) July 5, 2023

For now, Kiera’s central focus is on getting gig-ready, with two major Dublin shows – which were upgraded to the Opium due to phenomenal demand – lined up for after Christmas.

“Initially it was supposed to be Upstairs in Whelan’s,” she explains. “I was just thinking it would be a Christmas night out for my family, and maybe a few friends. Then the agent told me it was sold-out. I was like, ‘Excuse me?’

“I said, ‘Will there be enough people to do it downstairs at Whelan’s?’ But he told me we were moving it straight to Opium. And then that sold out, and we added a night two. I was like, ‘What’s happening? I don’t have that many friends and family!’”

• Nepo Baby is out now. Kiera Dignam plays Opium in Dublin (December 27 & 28).