Catherine McGrath

Irish singer-songwriter Catherine McGrath demonstrates that country music draws from sources far beyond the United States, merging youthful pop sensibilities with Nashville-rooted influences. She entered the world in 1998 in County Down, Northern Ireland. Her grandmother provided early guitar lessons, guiding her through an initial performance of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Both parents also performed regularly, appearing often at the annual Fiddlers Green Music Festival, and McGrath sharpened her abilities by observing their stage appearances alongside online instructional videos. Once she began writing her own songs, she shared videos of herself covering recent pop tracks in addition to performing her original material. Her developing sound drew equally from current pop and the refreshed country approaches of Taylor Swift, Kacey Musgraves, and Maddie & Tae. Those videos caught the notice of Instrumental, an organization that identifies online talent and prepares artists for wider careers; McGrath relocated to London to collaborate with the company and, within months, started making regular trips to Nashville for songwriting and recording work. In summer 2016, still only nineteen, she signed a recording agreement with Warner Bros., which issued her four-song debut EP, One, that December. Throughout the next year she wrote and tracked her first full-length album, Talk of This Town, splitting sessions between Nashville and London; the completed record reached listeners in summer 2018.