Derek Ryan

Emerging during the 2010s as one of Ireland’s most successful country singer-songwriters, County Carlow native Derek Ryan had earlier spent five years in the mid-2000s boy band D-Side. That experience, combined with a near-obsession for Bryan Adams’s catalog, infused his later solo work with both pop craftsmanship and radio-rock dynamics while remaining rooted in the folk and country traditions of his upbringing. By the release of his twelfth studio album, 2021’s Soft Ground, he had secured six Irish Top Ten entries.

Hailing from the village of Garryhill in Ireland’s South-East, Ryan received a toy drum kit at age four. In 1992, at nine years old, he claimed an all-Ireland bodhrán title and repeated the feat five years later in ceili drumming. Shortly after leaving school he joined D-Side, whose singles “Speechless” and “Invisible” (both 2003) plus “Real World” (2004) all reached the Top Ten in the U.K. and Ireland, while 2005’s “Sacrifice” topped the chart in China. Despite extensive European and Japanese tours and prominent television exposure, the band never translated its singles success into substantial album sales and disbanded in 2006.

At that point living in London, Ryan enrolled in an accountancy and finance course at UCL and supported himself through pub gigs. During a visit home, an overheard country performance in a neighboring function room prompted him to send a demo of his own song “God’s Plan” to Irish country radio DJs. Strong airplay led to a contract with County Tyrone’s Sharpe Music, which issued his debut album, A Mother’s Son, in 2010.

Made of Gold appeared the following year, followed in 2012 by Dreamers & Believers, which featured the early standout “Life Is a River.” Country Soul (2013) became his first Irish Top Ten album, and that same year Daniel O’Donnell included a cover of “God’s Plan” on the silver-selling A Picture of You, broadening Ryan’s audience further. The Simple Things (2014) and One Good Night (2015) both reached number one. He then traveled to Nashville to record This Is Me: The Nashville Songbook with Grammy-nominated producer Jeff Balding, a longtime Don Henley collaborator. Happy Man and The Fire followed, the latter including guest appearances by Goitse and Ryan’s brother Adrian; both sold strongly. Ten (2018) and The Road to Christmas (2020) charted modestly, yet Soft Ground returned him to the Irish Top Ten in 2021.