Derry songwriter in the running to represent Ireland in Eurovision

Darrell Coyle, a 28 year old Derry man living in Liverpool, has written a song that is in the running to represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Darrell wrote the song with Brendan Murray, a Galway singer who represented Ireland in 2017 but didn’t make it past the Semi-Finals. Darrell and Brendan will perform the song, called Real Love, on the Late Late Show on RTÉ on Friday, February 4 at 22.45. A public vote will be held to pick the song to represent Ireland in the singing competition.

Darrell explained, “During last lockdown, the proper one, I was teaching online and working from home. Every night I was going on and song writing. Jordan O Keefe was doing sessions with Brendan so he asked if I wanted to come on and see what I could do. I had written a song with Jordan before that so I was delighted to be asked again. There was a few sessions that Jordan couldn’t make so he said to batter on, do our own thing, so I had written the first verse and chorus of the song that is out now. Brendan really liked it and thought it had potential so he asked could we finish it, so we did. He came back a couple of months later and said ‘I hope you don’t mind but I have submitted this into Eurovision.’ I didn’t think anything of it but then he rang me up in November and said our song was picked out of 320. I didn’t know what to say, it was amazing! We’re proud as punch with ourselves to be honest.

“I did quite a bit of song writing when I was around 19 or 20 and I hooked up with Damien McGinty. He started a record label in Derry called Walled City Records and I released an EP through that. It went to Number 1 in Mexico and Peru because he had such a strong South American contingent from Glee and quite a lot of Americans too. That was my song writing start. I went off and became a teacher and I’ve been teaching now for seven years. During the lockdown, it just sparked all the juices again. At that point, no one knew what was going to happen so I thought to myself, I’m writing all these songs that I think are really good and they’re not going anywhere. I needed to start reaching out to more people and sharing and I found that quite a few people in Derry were really supportive. There’s a lad called Caolan Austin, who worked for Small Town America Records. He listened to some of my demos and gave some feedback and I really enjoyed that. I didn’t have a child at that point so I wrote a good lot of songs within a couple of months and then reality hit me up the face when I came out of lockdown.

“I would love to be a full time song writer. It’s an amazing job. You can see it on social media and its a multimillion pound glamorous lifestyle but I don’t want to be famous. I just want to do what I love - that’s the goal. That’s my take on it anyway. I think when you have kids your perception changes a little but I would love to have my own studio and work in my own environment.

“We’re playing live on the Late Late show on Friday night. The song is judged by a third public vote, a third National Jury vote and a third International jury vote. We’re in Dublin on Thursday for a performance that’s being recorded for the National Jury and the International Jury then the public can vote on the Late Late Show on Friday night. If we win, we’ll be representing Ireland.

“I can see the song on the stage at Eurovision. The original one that we brought out, we went back and revamped it. We want the song to reach as many people as possible so it was quite stripped back but we’ve added some staging and made it more of an event for the contest. That will be seen on Friday on the Late Late Show.

“I love Eurovision, me and my wife watch it every year and try to make a thing out of it. We booked a table last year at a place here in Liverpool and it was amazing. I would love to go. I’m afraid to ask my head teacher for a week off for Italy because I had to take time off to go to Dublin but it’s a once in a lifetime thing and who knows what will happen next. It might open a door where I get asked to write the next one. I’m proper proud, it’s two lads from Ireland that wrote a song that might represent Ireland.”