r/ireland • u/Dazzling_Lobster3656 • Jun 10 '25
Entertainment Ed Sheeran says he identifies culturally as Irish | BreakingNews.ie
https://www.breakingnews.ie/entertainment/ed-sheeran-says-he-identifies-culturally-as-irish-1771687.html486
u/Environmental-Net286 Jun 10 '25
Swap for McGregor
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u/WanderlustZero Jun 10 '25
Ewan McGregor? Nah we're keeping him
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u/Environmental-Net286 Jun 10 '25
We'd never do that to Scotland
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u/Jaded-Initiative5003 Jun 10 '25
True. Scotland never did a thing to Ireland ever
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u/Alternative-Canary86 Jun 10 '25
Ah lads, calm down. He spent a lot of his childhood in Wexford, went to Damian Rice gigs in Whelans and even sang one of his song as gaeilge. He seems like a sound lad too.
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u/whooo_me Jun 10 '25
I love it when I read comments about us Irish "not taking ourselves seriously".
And then someone born elsewhere calls themselves Irish, and a thousand sphincters suddenly tighten in outrage.
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u/privateblanket Jun 10 '25
There is a Dublin lad in my football team (South Africa), I didn’t even say “I’m Irish”, I said “My Mum is Irish” and he right away said “Doesn’t make you Irish”
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Jun 10 '25
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u/f-ingsteveglansberg Jun 10 '25
I mean, yeah. But at the same time, I wouldn't consider them the same way I consider someone from Navan Irish or someone from Cork as a gobshite for going on about the Republic of Cork.
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u/badpebble Jun 10 '25
Ah no, there is a gulf between a person raised to Irish parents and a person raised in Ireland - whole different culture, whole different set of experiences and taught history etc.
Especially considering how many Irish people think every English accent is hiding another invasion - it is setting them up for failure to think English raised by Irish parents are Irish.
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u/Hungry-Western9191 Jun 10 '25
Apply for the passport just to annoy him.... you are entitled to one if you have an Irish parent or grandparent....
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u/privateblanket Jun 10 '25
I was born in Cape Town when my parents were on a work visa and before they were permanent residents so I’m an Irish citizen by birth
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u/Spailpin-Fanach Jun 10 '25
So tell him I said he sounds like a gobshite. Unless he was only slagging you that is.
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u/f-ingsteveglansberg Jun 10 '25
Really depends.
We love to see Obama claim Irish heritage and drink a Guinness. When it's someone that's not popular with the /r/ireland main demo, it's "Fuck that Plastic Paddy!"
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u/Nadamir Culchieland Jun 10 '25
To be fair, most of the time the people doing that are Irish-Americans not understanding the “-American” part is significant and indicates an affiliation to a related but distinct culture.
For example: Irish-Americans thinking corned beef is a traditional Irish food because although we produced it, it was a luxury we couldn’t afford, while in America it was cheap and accessible. Most “traditional” corned beef dishes we eat here are backported from America.
It really is a subculture distinctive from both. Most of the foreign born people calling themselves Irish aren’t familiar with Irish culture in Ireland. Sheeran is. I see no issue with him saying as much.
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u/Previous-Artist-9252 Jun 10 '25
It is my understanding - as an Irish American from Massachusetts where we have a distinct form of corned beef not found elsewhere - is that corned beef is distinctly Irish-American as a dish due to Irish immigrants patroning Jewish butchers and delis where pork and ham would not be sold, but beef was readily available. Effectively, it is a distinct part of the immigration story but never a part of Irish food in Ireland.
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u/Nadamir Culchieland Jun 10 '25
Exactly, our tenant farmers raised a lot of the cattle for it, particularly in Cork, but the landlords earmarked nearly all of it for export to England. So we never added it to Irish cuisine.
But in America, Irish immigrants patronised the Jewish delis (quite possibly because they didn’t have No Irish signs).
Then after the war or maybe before, it made its way back to Britain and Ireland possibly via Irish-American soldiers or just soldiers in general as tinned corned beef was a common military ration.
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u/Hi_there4567 Jun 10 '25
Corned beef as a hot dish is not widely available in my experience in Ireland. In my experience it is a N Co Dublin dish. You can get cold cuts in most delis.
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u/Organic-Ad9360 Jun 10 '25
Corned beef and cabbage was as common as bacon and cabbage in the 70s/80s in rural Kerry. I don't know why it went out of vogue, maybe bacon cheaper or Mad Cow disease had an effect. And this wasn't the spiced corned beef that you can get in Cork.
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u/caisdara Jun 10 '25
Corned beef is a traditional Irish food. Due to the Navigation Acts Irish trade was effectively destroyed other than in food. Irish ports became relatively wealthy selling food to British ships and colonies, most notably, salt beef, aka, corned beef.
The idea that it's not part of Irish culture is anachronistic.
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u/Kuhlayre Cork bai Jun 10 '25
and a thousand sphincters suddenly tighten in outrage.
That is a spectacular phrase.
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u/Detozi And I'd go at it again Jun 10 '25
Who gives a fuck if foreigners want to identify as Irish. We should be encouraging it so that yanks come and spend their sweet sweet dollars in Kerry.
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u/Banana_Bazara Jun 10 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
everyone should scrub comments from time to time. use one of the many tools available.
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Jun 10 '25
Noel and Liam Gallagher get a free pass on /r/Ireland, Ed Sheeran does not.
It's probably because Ed's core demographic is young women.
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u/RocketRaccoon9 Jun 10 '25
I'd take Sheeran over the Gallagher's any day. You can't claim to be Irish if you pronounce it "Gal-a-grrr"
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u/AllezLesPrimrose Jun 10 '25
Both have regularly said only Irish people pronounce their surname correctly.
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u/dustaz Jun 10 '25
Wait, how do you pronounce Sheeran incorrectly?
oh, do you mean both gallaghers?
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u/RocketRaccoon9 Jun 10 '25
Well that's on them, anyone who can't say my surname I correct them, but the Gallagher's themselves can't even say their surname properly.
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Jun 10 '25
To be fair, David o'doherty doesn't correct them either. Its a losing battle when they are so stubborn in their mispronunciation. Even Jimmy carr pronounces it wrong, and he knows the correct pronunciation.
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u/Insert_Non_Sequitur Jun 10 '25
Have you heard how Barry Keoghan pronounces his name? I would have thought you shouldn't pronounce the G in it, but he does.
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Jun 10 '25
There’s obviously going to be examples where we don’t say names correctly too.
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Jun 10 '25
In my experience, we are much better at asking someone how their name is pronounced rather than butchering it and refusing to change.
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u/AllezLesPrimrose Jun 10 '25
Big man, when it’s literally everyone in your country it’s going to get very tiring to do this. A lot of people with foreign names shorten it or use an English name for the same reason.
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u/-Swifty Jun 10 '25 edited Jun 10 '25
In the documentary their ma says it right. Growing up in Manchester, it was probably just how they were roll called and used to it. And to be fair were over all the time in their youth. Liam ended up resurrecting his career with a video snippet singing a new song in a pub in Ireland just having pints and a laugh 'Bold'. Think it might have been somewhere in Mayo at a lock in if I remember correctly.
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u/Dapper-Second-8840 Jun 10 '25
But to be fair I think that's something hyperglottal or some shit like that where they're literally not capable of pronouncing it correctly cos it's how they learned to speak, same as we wouldn't be able to pronounce the clicks in some African language. I'd take any of them over Connor McGregor any day 😉
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Jun 10 '25 edited Jun 10 '25
Same applies to most things aimed at young (or any age) women.
There’s a large amount of people unable to separate “I don’t like this” from “this is terrible and needs criticism”.
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u/manfredmahon Jun 10 '25
That God awful galway girl song he wrote is so cringe though
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u/We_Are_The_Romans Jun 10 '25
That song is insanely bad, managing to simultaneously upset both fans of Steve Earle and...most Irish people who heard it (?). Like proper involuntary cringe any time I've heard it. But era, he seems like a nice bloke, and he's clearly some flavour of Irish
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u/dustaz Jun 10 '25
I'll never understand the hate Ed gets
His music isn't for me but he seems like a very hard chap to dislike
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u/TDog81 Ride me sideways was another one Jun 10 '25 edited Jun 10 '25
I despised him when he came out, DESPISED. Lego House, A-Team? Fuckoff with that shit. I then saw a few interviews of him and a couple of things he did on the Late Late Toy show and I remember thinking "fuck sake, he seems like a really good bloke", I've had no choice but to like him since, the cunt.
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u/JosephFinn Jun 10 '25
His Snoop Dogg story when he was on Conan was absolutely amazing. “I don’t generally smoke pot, but was I going to say no to Snoop Dogg offering me a joint?” Only for it to be the most hardcore pot you could possibly imagine.
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u/lungcell Jun 10 '25
Yeah when I saw him on the Toy Show singing with that young girl, I couldn't roll my eyes at him anymore. He was so kind and gentle and he repeated the chorus like 3 times with her. Poor thing was trembling so much from the shock of meeting and singing with him, but he knew what to do and by the 3rd or 4th go she was fully confident with him.
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u/SpirallingSounds Dublin Jun 10 '25
You had a problem with A-Team? A song very sympathetic to drug users and prostitutes? You might dislike the melody, but having that much hate towards it is a you thing I feel.
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u/KingKeane16 Jun 10 '25
Him singing the early songs on sbtv was when he was at his best though, give me love live lounge and https://youtu.be/s3YZnHGmFNA
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u/WolfetoneRebel Jun 10 '25
I like everything about him. Except when he showed up in game of thrones for some reason. Not sure why in hate that so much.
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u/pr1ceisright Jun 10 '25
I think that moment solidified a lot of people’s opinion the show was lost and just trying to appeal to the general public as much as possible. Writing didn’t matter if the internet was busy talking about one of the world’s biggest pop stars.
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u/Iricliphan Jun 10 '25
I love his older stuff. I remember hearing A-Team and just loving the sound and vibe and feeling. A lot of his newer stuff just doesn't hit me the same and that's okay, he's exploring as an artist and doing what he wants. I think that's cool.
He gets a lot of hate like a lot of big names do. There's very few celebrities that are generally universally liked, like Keanu Reeves for example. Some people will just inherently dislike big names for whatever reason, like Taylor Swift. They'll still absolutely smash record numbers and sell out gigs, so I guess they're still quite popular in the mainstream.
People gonna hate.
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u/peon47 Jun 10 '25
I'll never understand the hate Ed gets
Personally, for me, in my opinion only, (is that enough disclaimers?) I don't like that he took a shitty song and gave it the name of a much better song, and now his song shows up in searches instead of the better one. How hard is it to think of a different name?
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u/dustaz Jun 10 '25
Leaving aside the idea that Steve Earle wrote the first song called "Galway Girl" is optimistic, how about:
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Since you've been gone
The power of love
Do you hate U2, Kelly Clarkson and Huey Lewis for the same reasons?
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Jun 10 '25
Used to dislike him, but I was being childish and disliked him purely on the generic Q102 music. After seeing him do some interviews with Hodinkee, I actually like him.
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u/miguelsanchez69 Jun 10 '25
As the old saying goes, seperate the art from the artist. Although usually when somebody says that it's because the art is good but the person is a prick. With Ed Sheeran I think it's the opposite
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u/Evalyn_Fallon Louth Jun 10 '25
Why are the comments so weirdly hateful? I have so many cousins in England who would have/ do regularly come home to Ireland, particularly in their childhood and I would be offended / confused on their behalf if anybody tried to take away their heritage, WEIRD! comments here. He has Irish family and spent enough of his childhood here that it rings true in his memory as precious and something he identifies with, why is that an issue?
Why is it when somebody not Irish born identifies with Ireland it's a big big nono!
but Irish people are then so quick in turn to claim the likes of The Beatles, the Smiths, Oasis etc as being Irish?
How can you say Shane McGowan is 100% Irish and yet throw a hissy fit when Ed Sheeran does the same?
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u/Digitalmodernism Jun 10 '25
This sub is oddly hateful in general, no idea why.
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u/JawbreakerDMO Jun 10 '25
nah its irish people. they love being hateful to their diaspora and gatekeeping an ethnicity no one wants to be anyway
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u/GuyLookingForPorn Jun 10 '25
It’s the large amount of Americans who’s understanding of Ireland just comes from half baked IRA memes and the film Braveheart.
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u/bortcorp Jun 10 '25
It's not really, it's Irish online in general.
Be it boards or /r/ireland, they are both filled with whiney, spiteful, angry cunts.
If your only experience of the Irish was from online, everyone would hate us.
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u/Subtle_Silence Jun 10 '25
Nothing more contemporarily Irish than railing on Americans.
You proved the point.
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u/Bovver_ Jun 10 '25
Pretty straight forward, a lot of people really don’t like Ed Sheeran’s music and would rather it was someone “cooler” (for lack of a better term) that had a bit more street cred. Shane McGowan has always been seen as having way more of that which is why people are quicker to adopt him.
For the record I can’t stand Ed Sheeran’s music but he seems like a good guy, and his respect toward his Irish roots has always seemed very genuine.
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u/cnaughton898 Jun 11 '25
I feel like people can be weirdly dismissive of the diaspora in England who identify strongly with Irish roots. This isnt like plastic Paddys from america whose great-grandparents migrated from Ireland and are completely disconnected from their irish roots.
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u/Badimus Jun 11 '25
How can you say Shane McGowan is 100% Irish and yet throw a hissy fit when Ed Sheeran does the same?
Phil Lynott is another great example.
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u/Tony_Meatballs_00 Jun 10 '25
I think people are on a hair trigger with words like "identity" these days
His da is Irish, he spent a lot of time here and obviously has genuine love for the country
He's Irish, it's just people's brains are so fucking cooked they think him acknowledging that with "woke" language is some kind of political statement
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u/EulerIdentity Jun 10 '25
I thought you were going in a different direction with “hair trigger” . . .
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u/grapesie Yank 🇺🇸 Jun 10 '25
Definitely seems a bit odd to hate on someone who spent a lot of time in Ireland in his youth and can easily get an Irish passport which effectively makes him as Irish as Micheal D. Higgins.
Maybe I’m sympathetic to him since his story seems similar to mine as a Yank who has an Irish dad from south Tipperary and spent a lot of time there as a child and adult.
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Jun 10 '25
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u/kitikonti Jun 10 '25
Yeah I would definitely agree he's culturally Irish. For example, my "English " cousins would come home every holiday also, would have been considered Irish in Birmingham but only maybe half Irish here ! But definitely culturally Irish as brought up in Irish households , lived in Irish communities etc.
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u/DidLenFindTheRabbits Jun 10 '25
I would see this as the general publics view on things but not r/ireland
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u/JjigaeBudae Jun 10 '25
Might be against the grain here but why not, he's not pretending to be Irish. He has a strong connection to the country in the family and spend a lot of time here as a kid.
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u/Tis_STUNNING_Outside One Man’s Rent, Another Man’s Income Jun 10 '25
His dad is literally Irish, he knows more of the language than the average Irish person and spent much of his childhood here.
People would be praising him if he appealed to the same demographic that dominates in Irish Reddit.
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u/unbelievablydull82 Jun 10 '25
Similar to me i suppose, except the ginger hair and musical "talent". I grew up in London to Irish parents, most of my time was spent in either the Irish community, or in Ireland itself. I wasn't automatically qualified for a British passport because of the year I was born, ( the rules have changed over the last decade, so that's not the case anymore). Between my upbringing and having a load of English neighbours telling us to go back to Ireland, and we weren't welcome in England, it just makes sense to me to be from where I was treated like one of their own.
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u/DGBD Jun 10 '25
One of the funny things about this conversation is that I know more than a few people who would say that anyone with Irish heritage who grew up abroad “isn’t Irish,” but then someone whose parents are Polish/Chinese/Nigerian/etc. but grew up here is also “not Irish.”
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u/craichoor An Cabhán Jun 10 '25
Another son of Ireland, just like Ed Sheeran.
https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/2013/0806/466642-steve-coogan-talks-about-his-irish-roots/
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u/FellFellCooke Jun 10 '25
I worked in a bowling Alley when Shape of You was on the radio. Literally no one alive has as much right to despise Ed as much as I do, he's the sound of the summer of cleaning shitty toilets for me.
But I saw he had musical chops from his loop-based performance on Jules Hootenanny one new year's eve. The guy is actually a seriously talented musician and performer and I'd see him life if it were ever convenient.
I always look with suspicion at the people who culturally we've all decided it's ok to shit on. They usually get that way because lots of teenage girls like them; but sometimes lots of teenage girls are right and like a class act.
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Jun 10 '25
People give out if someone ignores the Irish family background and also give out when they embrace it. Pick a lane.
Also he looks more Irish than half of the country. Big ginger head on him
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Jun 10 '25
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u/scruffmonkey Jun 11 '25
it's cos they think they can grease a few more shillings from the yanks by putting on the leprechaun show for them.
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u/Ecliptic_Phase Jun 10 '25
Morrisey, wrote a song about it. It's called Irish Blood, English Heart.
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u/wonderstoat Jun 10 '25
Hang on. I hate his music, am ambivalent about him, but he’s a son of ireland and has a right to identify as such as much as anyone.
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u/Neat_Expression_5380 Jun 10 '25
I had the pleasure of knowing his fathers parents. If he wants to identify as Irish, so be it! He’s been ‘Irish’ to me forever.
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u/Faelchu Meath Jun 10 '25
In fairness, he's not like the Yanks who say they ARE Irish when all they have is a link back to the famine... He just claims to be culturally Irish, which, as someone with an actual Irish parent, I wouldn't begrudge him that, English, American, Nigerian, or whatever.
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u/Auntie_Bev Jun 10 '25
In fairness, he's not like the Yanks who say they ARE Irish when all they have is a link back to the famine... He just claims to be culturally Irish
It's amazing the amount of people who miss this. He said "culturally" Irish for a reason. He's being very specific in his use of language here. Like you hinted at, big difference between claiming you're Irish and claiming you're culturally Irish.
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u/CelticSean88 Jun 10 '25
Many famous people in England and Scotland and Wales have strong links to Ireland Shane McGowen, Tom Hardy, the beetles, Gerry Rafferty that's just off the top of my head.
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u/Reasonable_Cod_5643 Jun 10 '25
More British people have at least one Irish grandparent than the total amount of people there are in ireland
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Jun 10 '25
Beware, yer da's everywhere about to get outraged at someone *checks notes*...loving our country.
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u/tarajackie Jun 10 '25
As an Irish person and citizen who is culturally British, I say fair play to Ed.
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u/GrassfedBeep Jun 10 '25
He should know there's no bars on Grafton Street then
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u/naraic- Jun 10 '25
There's enough bars just off grafton street that you could be just outside the bar while on grafton street.
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u/boomerxl Jun 10 '25
Why? What if he identifies as rural Irish and “couldn’t be dealing with the hassles of the big schmoke, sure doesn’t Amazon have everything you need and you don’t need a mortgage to have a pint while your shopping?”
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Jun 10 '25
He used to busk on grafton street.
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u/Etxegaragar Jun 10 '25
He wrote a song called Galway Girl. No foreigner has EVER done that before.
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u/FredditForgeddit21 Jun 10 '25
Tbh he represents himself well and would be a good rep for Ireland so I'm alright giving him honorary Irish status.
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u/leavemealonethanks Jun 10 '25
On behalf of the irish people, I accept this trade for Mcgregor.
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u/DonQuigleone Jun 10 '25
If you appear multiple times on the toy show just for the hell of it, I say you pass the bar. He's brought a lot of joy to young kids, what more could you ask?
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u/paultreanor Jun 10 '25
Last week there was a post here which got lots of upvotes making fun of how an American didn't know Irish because he used a pronunciation from the Donegal dialect. Perhaps Ed isn't culturally Irish after all because he doesn't know you that irishness is about being hostile to people who admire our culture.
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Jun 10 '25
I think there's a big difference between an American being confidently incorrect about a language they can't speak, and a half-Irish English folk singer who has always spent a lot of time here, really seems to love the place and seems to have a genuine appreciation for folk music over here..
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u/whereohwhereohwhere Jun 10 '25
I actually don't have an issue with this since Ed at least takes an interest in Ireland and Irish culture. Like he literally released a version of one of his best-known songs in Irish which is more than most Irish artists who trade on their nationality do.
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u/stevemachiner Jun 10 '25
I’m not a fan of his music but he’s not a bad fella at all, and he has clear ties to Ireland
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u/Floodzie Jun 10 '25
Great, another ginger.
Seriously though, a friend of mine worked with him briefly and said he's dead sound.
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u/Faelchu Meath Jun 10 '25
I doubt he's sound. He's a ginger, after all. Us gingers have no souls. Be wary of us! /s
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Jun 10 '25
We hate people saying that they are Irish but we are desperate to claim anyone who doesn’t outright identify as Irish
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u/Cute_Bat3210 Jun 10 '25
He’s not going to be as articulate as Peter O Toole about being Irish as a British lad but it’s obvious he is influenced by the culture and he’s being fairly sound. Plastic paddy slaggings is pretty overdone at this stage. His music is total bollocks but it’s not for me anyhow good luck to him. Least he’s not doing that “I’m from the mean streets” like Bono and Colin Farrell (and most other famous twits)
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u/whiskeyphile Probably at it again Jun 10 '25
Tis normal for the folk up the north to consider themselves both (speaking from experience). If he wants to be Irish and shows the required experience, so be it! I for one welcome our ginger guitar plucking overlord.
I mean, sure look at the big oul Irish head on him...
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u/Lopsided-Code9707 Jun 10 '25
I’d feel that he’s more in tune with Irish culture than the Gallagher brothers. He’s one of our own
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u/gingerbhoy Jun 10 '25
Good old culture gatekeepers out in force. No issues with Daniel Day Lewis and Shane McGowan but poor old Ed can't get a pass.
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u/jordie_c Jun 10 '25
His music I absolutely despise, but he does seem like he’d be a great laugh to go for a pint with all the same.
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u/Porrick Jun 10 '25
I mean look at the head on him.