Following on from her stunning single ‘All Those Yesterdays’ released last November, Irish Singer – Songwriter Megan O’Neill returns with a new song ‘The Hard Way’.
Self-written, the song was recorded at the Meadow Studios, Delgany, in June 2023 and produced by O’Neill and Alex Borwick. ‘The Hard Way’ was recorded mostly live, featuring an incredible bunch of players consisting of Paul Kenny (drums; James Vincent McMorrow, Get Well Soon), Joseph Doyle (bass; Glen Hansard, Lisa O’Neill) and Sam Killeen (electric guitar; Kodaline, Lisa Hannigan). Alex Borwick adds some beautiful trombone and Scott Halliday (mixing) and Stephen Ceresia (mastering) provide the finishing touches. Megan herself plays piano and electric guitar on the track.
Penned by O’Neill in early 2023, the song reflects a period of grappling with grief and loss. Partially inspired by Jon Kabat-Zinn’s famous book, ‘Wherever You Go, There You Are,’ the lyrics of ‘The Hard Way’ convey Megan’s sense of loneliness, which persisted whether she was living in the countryside or the city during this period.
The song concludes with an acceptance that life is a combination of the good and bad, the beautiful and the imperfect, but that it’s taken quite some time for O’Neill to understand and embrace this.
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Last year, O’Neill released an EP titled: Time (Thought you were on my side), featuring five songs written and recorded with producer Richey McCourt. This EP merges her folk, storytelling roots with more electronic elements and was stylistically somewhat different to previous material, highlighting O’Neill’s ability to successfully move between genres. Both singles (Wildfire and Fail Better) became top 10 charting singles and were playlisted by RTE Radio 1, iRadio, Spin 1038 and more, as well as featured performances on BBC’s Across the Line and Virgin Media’s Six O’Clock Show.
Megan’s sophomore studio album Getting Comfortable with Uncertainty was released in March 2021. Time in a Bottle, the bonus track, featured in the opening scene of hit Netflix TV Show Firefly Lane and one week later, O’Neill performed the song live on the RTE Late Late Show – charting that same weekend in Ireland across all genres. Megan’s subsequent Late Late Show performance was this past September when she performed Brian Byrne’s ‘Lay Your Head Down’, originally released with Sinead O’Connor on vocals.
Deemed a “rising star” by uDiscover and Timeout Magazine London, Megan has toured globally. She has performed at private Oscars’ parties in LA alongside Gavin James (on invite from JJ Abrams) and has had her song ‘Don’t You’ featured on ABC’s hit TV Show ‘Nashville’ (Season 3). She has opened for the likes of Sir Tom Jones, Lighthouse Family and Jamie Cullum (to name a few) and the late Olivia Newton-John was a self-proclaimed Megan O’Neill fan.
Late in 2022, Megan toured with Glen Hansard across Ireland as part of his band and took part in the famous Christmas Eve Busk on Grafton Street. She is also a member of indie-electronic project ‘Where the Waters Meet’ alongside Paul Kenny which launched in November 2022 with a commissioned piece for the Recording Academy (The Grammy Awards): their cover of ‘Bette Davis Eyes’.
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