Who was Ireland’s “first international pop star”?
When Ireland and ‘international pop star’ go together, the typical images are of Enya, or perhaps more recently, CMAT. But Bridie Gallagher might have had something to say about that.
It was the spark in the eye of a humble girl from Donegal that captured the hearts of millions around the world way back in the 1950s when Gallagher began her career, firstly in a local hall in Creeslough, where she sang in a Ceili band. There, she was quickly snapped up by a scout from Decca Records, who helped her harness the charm to make her career take flight.
Of course, it probably goes without saying that in the year of 1956, the idea of international pop stardom was quite different from how we imagine it today. If nothing else, it was for the simple reason that there wasn’t the infrastructure of arenas and stadiums to accommodate artists of that size. But in every other measure, Gallagher was the storming Irish sensation that set the world alight.
To this very day, she holds some seismic records – including having the highest-ever attended concert to take place at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with an audience of 7,500. That remained a record forever unbroken since the venue went on to take out its standing area and replace it completely with seats.
But further afield, Gallagher also went on to gain monumental acclaim across the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia, bringing a taste of home with her no matter where she went, as all over the world, she was known as the ‘Girl from Donegal’. To this end, it was always a touch of Irish luck that glittered in her success, with her rendition of ‘The Boys from County Armagh’ sending her global.
What happened to the first international pop star from Ireland?
From singing at Carnegie Hall in New York to the Sydney Opera House, and having the best-selling Irish single ever at one time after ‘The Boys from County Armagh’ sold 250,000 copies, Gallagher’s career was so stratospheric that it sustained her in a constant stream of success for no less than six decades.
Yet perhaps the most remarkable thing about her was that she never lost touch with where she came from, or the roots that made her famous in the first place – throughout her life, she never upped sticks out of Belfast at any point, marrying her husband and raising two sons there, because after all, the ‘Girl From Donegal’ could never abandon her homeland like that.
Naturally, staying close to where it all began for Gallagher didn’t come without life’s inevitable moments of pain for her. When her son Peter tragically died aged 21 in a motorbike accident in 1976, “she never really got over that,” said her other son, Jim, “but she just kept going.” Eventually, when Gallagher herself passed away aged 87 in 2012, it was still at home – just where she always wanted to be.
Gallagher’s story proves more than ever that in the life of a pop star, you can be handed all the champagne and roses the world has to offer on a crystallised plate, and never give in to the whims of grandeur and luxury. Home is where the heart is, and as much as she was considered Ireland’s first international pop star, all the paths she blazed led her straight back to one place.
