Sadhbh Keane has been personally invited by Glen Hansard to join the Christmas Busk at the Gaiety Theatre on Christmas Eve.
Sadhbh Keane is a 16-year-old singer songwriter and busker from Dublin, Ireland with over 25K streams on Spotify, 36K views on YouTube and multiple live performances to her name, including two recent sold-out headline shows. Sadhbh played Kaleidoscope in June this year
and has supported Niall McNamee, Emma Langford and Eimear Crehan in the past 12 months.
Her debut EP ‘Passion + Paper’ was released in May 2023. In June this year Sadhbh sang the EP’s lead single Worthwhile live on 2fm. Beta De Silva has played Sadhbh’s EP on 2fm.
Struck by the lack of humanity shown towards homelessness and frustrated by inaction, Sadhbh wrote Life at Christmas. Ultimately Sadhbh wants people to see the human tragedy
behind the headlines and to help raise awareness and funds for homelessness through this song.
Chloë Agnew (Celtic Women, The Brave Collide, X Collective) heard Sadhbh play the song and joined forces with producer Brian McGrane to produce Life at Christmas.
Chloë’s reaction when she heard it first; ‘I have been trying to write a song about homelessness but I am going to stop now, I won’t do better than this, it is world-class’.
“Life At Christmas” is a Christmas song that resonates and asks for empathy and action. The narrative tells one person’s story by contrasting nostalgic Christmas imagery against the stark reality of life on the streets of Dublin.
This song etches into our minds, the human tragedy inflicted by homelessness. The story also depicts vividly the demeaning and undignified treatment which is this person’s reality. This song could be described as a protest song. Calling out the inadequacies of efforts to end the crisis:
– “How many buckets do we have to fill for this to stop happening?”
Sadhbh goes beyond what we see and typically consider as we walk by a homeless person and speaks to the family heartache often the outcome of homelessness:
– “You don’t know where your family is, all you can do is hope that someone loves your kids, the way you did (…) the way you always will”.
This is a Christmas song with meaning, empathy and humanity which will resonate across demographics. It is intentional for Life at Christmas to be impactful. It is a call to action which
is all the more powerful because of its author, and the generation she represents.
Sadhbh is honoured that Glen Hansard has personally invited her to sing Life at Christmas at the Christmas Eve busk outside the Gaiety Theatre this coming Christmas Eve.
