- Music
- 05 Nov 09
The Mighty Flynn
She first caught our ears as the breathy vocalist covering ‘Let’s Dance’ on the Ballygowan ad, but Miss Paula Flynn now has her own album of original songs on release.
So what’s with this "Miss" Paul Flynn malarkey? “‘Miss Paula Flynn’ is really a stage thing,” she says. “Off-stage I’m Paula Flynn. I’ve no pretentions or delusions about myself.”
The 29-year-old Flynn has been Jinx Lennon’s musical sidekick for eight years. Before that, she was on the cabaret circuit, singing as a support act to the likes of Joe Dolan and Declan Nerney. When her breathy, slow version of Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’ climbed to number five in Irish charts, many might have thought that its success would open doors for her, but not so.
She recounts: “At the time I had two offers of albums. One company wanted me to do an album of covers, like ‘Let’s Dance’. I could have done a quirky Nouvelle Vague thing. I didn’t feel it. I wondered how people would take me seriously afterwards. Another wanted me to do an album of songs by other Irish singers. I wasn’t interested in the first option and I looked at the second idea and tried out a few songs by writers I knew. In the end I felt I wanted to wait and do my own album without any restraints. ”
When it comes to songwriting, Flynn says her main influence is probably Elvis Costello. “I’m also a big fan of Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash. With Elvis, his music makes you sit down and think about it.”
And how does she approach lyric writing? “I’m usually inspired to write by something very simple, maybe something somebody says: then it all comes out as a stream of consciousness thing over a load of pages. I might then leave it and come back to it. But I never sit down deliberately to write a song. That wouldn’t work for me.”
Flynn says that some of the tracks on her album may be based on lyrics she wrote years ago. “If you take the song ‘Ghost In My Car’ for instance. That phrase was floating around in my head for ages.”
She admits that she’s still coming to terms with being a successful musician.
“I was in HMV and somebody pointed out my records up on a shelf, and it finally came home to me like it never had before. I felt very pleased about it. I know people in the music business who have no self-doubt whatsoever, and that scares me. I wouldn’t want to be like that.”
