Paddy Casey

Irish singer-songwriter Paddy Casey found his formative experiences performing as a busker along the streets of Galway and in his native Dublin to be invaluable. Those years not only connected him at a young age with soon-to-emerge talents such as Glen Hansard of the Frames, Mundy, and Mark Dignam, but they also sharpened his ability to craft melodies and lyrics that feel direct and gripping while retaining an unforced closeness rarely encountered in mainstream pop. Although he openly favors pure soul, Casey’s output draws heavily from its core format—the solo singer with acoustic guitar—evoking the impression of Bob Dylan channeling Nina Simone and folding in touches of Prince alongside Public Enemy.

Casey first took to busking on Dublin thoroughfares in the early 1990s while still in his early teens. By 1998 the committed street performer had entered the major-label system, joining Sony’s S2 Records imprint after Muff Winwood, the former Spencer Davis Group bassist now working as an A&R executive, caught one of his Dublin sets and was immediately impressed. Entering the studio later that year merely to capture a few rough ideas, Casey unexpectedly completed his debut album Amen (So Be It). Issued in June 1999, the record entered the Top Twenty on the Irish albums chart, eventually earned triple-platinum status, and received the Best Debut Album honor at the Hot Press Irish Music Awards. Though it occasionally betrayed an overly deliberate display of the artist’s wide-ranging tastes, the album succeeded in weaving jazz, funk, and reggae elements around its folky soul foundation, with understated hip-hop beats and scratches adding texture; its most memorable passages, however, remained its most unadorned, and Casey soon gained recognition for the Dylan-esque protest song “Sweet Suburban Sky,” which received prominent placement on the American television series Dawson’s Creek.

Even though the album reached the United States in June 2000, more than three years elapsed before Casey delivered a successor, a delay reflected in the album’s title. Living appeared in Ireland in October 2003 and in the United Kingdom the following March, propelled by the extraordinary Irish success of lead single “Saints and Sinners,” which ultimately achieved twelve-times-platinum certification. That same year Casey contributed two tracks to the charity compilation Even Better Than the Real Thing, Vol. 2: a fresh version of “Saints and Sinners” with the Dublin Gospel Choir and an acoustic take on Blackstreet’s “No Diggity,” a longtime concert staple. Living was reissued in Ireland in November 2004 as a double-disc edition containing B-sides and rarities. The staggered rollout earned Casey the Best Irish Male award at both the 2004 and 2005 Meteor Irish Music Awards. In the first half of 2007 he tracked his third studio album, Addicted to Company, Pt. 1, which included a guest appearance by former bandmate and solo artist Declan O’Rourke; the set reached Ireland and the United Kingdom the following September, with the title track issued as a single at the same time.