Liam Neeson’s 10 favourite songs: “It still makes me tear up”
Liam Neeson never needed to raise his voice to command attention. With a career spanning quietly devastating dramas and full-throttle action thrillers, he’s become one of cinema’s most enduring presences. Holding pivotal roles in films like Schindler’s List and the Taken franchise, Liam Neeson has long balanced gravitas with a deep, often unspoken ache that seems to live in the silences between his lines.
But off-screen, the actor isn’t chasing adrenaline. His quieter passion in music that, much like his most compelling characters, sits somewhere between sorrow and grace.
Born in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, Neeson’s love of traditional Irish ballads, spirituals, and soul classics forms the backbone of this musical taste. He rarely shares playlists, but in a Two Paddocks interview, he commented on his top ten favourite songs.
Eva Cassidy’s rendition of ‘Danny Boy’ opens the list. “Love this version,” he says. “I used to sing it to my kids at bedtime. It still makes me tear up whenever I hear it sung.” It’s an entry that immediately soaks the playlist in tender intimacy.
Van Morrison appears twice, and rightly so. Neeson grew up in Ballymena, just a short drive from Morrison’s Belfast, and the connection runs deeper than geography. “It evokes a Belfast I remember before The Troubles,” he says of ‘Hyndford Street’, a spoken-word meditation on place and memory.
There’s no embellishment, just a man walking through the streets of his past. Morrison returns later with any song on Astral Weeks, which Neeson calls “one of the great albums.” His final note is simple but telling: “Van was a local boy!”, which really says everything.
On hearing ‘Eleanor Rigby’ for the first time, Neeson recalls thinking, “The Beatles could do anything!” That same awe resurfaces with Ry Cooder’s theme for Paris, Texas, “haunting music to a haunting film by Wenders. I listen to it regularly.” He puts so much intention into his top choices. Each track points to something he’s lived through or something that’s shaped him.
The entire album of Pink Floyd’s The Wall also makes the cut. “Seeing The Wall at Earls Court, in London in 1981, blew my mind,” Neeson recalls. “I was sitting with Helen Mirren. A great concert!” Rooted again by his lived experience, his fandom is unpretentious and sincere.
Some choices lean toward the cinematic. Ennio Morricone’s theme from The Mission appears, which Neeson admits with a laugh is “biased” — he was in the film, after all. Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ lands with more weight. “How do you begin to describe this incredible piece of music?” he muses. “Every emotion is there and then some.” There’s no need for interpretation. The music speaks, and Liam Neeson understands how to immerse himself and flow with it.
‘Greensleeves’, arranged by Vaughan Williams, rounds out the list with a nod to old England. “Evokes pastoral England and Shakespeare somehow. Love it.” And finally, Dire Straits’ ‘Brothers in Arms’, a track that Neeson says “sort of defined the eighties” for him. “A classic.”
These songs are Liam Neeson’s emotional relics. Chosen not for the listener, but for the man remembering. His playlist isn’t loud and doesn’t try to impress. It’s an entrancing thread running through the background of his life, made up of songs that carry weight and fond memory.
Liam Neeson’s favourite songs:
- ‘Danny Boy’ – Eva Cassidy
- ‘Hyndford Street’ – Van Morrison
- ‘Eleanor Rigby’ – The Beatles
- Any song – The Wall, Pink Floyd
- ‘Opening Theme’ – Paris, Texas, Ry Cooder
- Any song – Astral Weeks, Van Morrison
- ‘Brothers in Arms’ – Dire Straits
- ‘Greensleeves’ – Vaughan Williams
- ‘Requiem’ – Mozart
- ‘Opening Theme’ – The Mission, Ennio Morricone
