The first song Cillian Murphy fell in love with
The acting ability of Cillian Murphy is completely undoubted. The Irish actor has offered his services to some of today’s greatest directors, most notably Christopher Nolan, with whom Murphy has made six films, including The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and the forthcoming Oppenheimer, in which he portrays the “father of the atomic” bomb Robert J. Oppenheimer.
However, it’s not just acting that Murphy enjoys; he’s also known to be a dedicated music lover and writes his own tunes to accompany his vast record collection. And when it comes to the music that makes up Cillian Murphy, it’s hard for him to look beyond The Beatles. In a feature with NME, Murphy once said that the first song he fell in love with was the Beatles’ classic ‘Love Me Do’, which was originally released back in October of 1962.
Murphy said of his parents playing the song when he was growing up: “They were playing around the house, and I think maybe my dad had The Beatles: 20 Greatest Hits on record. It was probably ‘Love Me Do’ or something. That was the first track on the first side. That’s rock’n’roll. I remember that harmonica solo very well.”
Murphy had stated in another interview with Rolling Stone that he’s always been crazy about the Beatles. “So I’m a Beatles fanatic, a Beatles nut,” he said, “And I have been ever since I was very young. My dad has been playing the Beatles since I was tiny.” So Murphy undoubtedly owes his love of the Fab Four to his father.
When it comes to picking his favourite member of the band, it looks as though Murphy prefers the songwriting of John Lennon and says that Lennon’s debut solo album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, which Apple Records originally released back in 1970.
Discussing the album, Murphy said, “I don’t know what age I was, and I don’t know exactly who it was, but someone introduced me to the Plastic Ono Band, the John Lennon record. It’s probably one of my favourite records of all time. Probably my favourite solo Beatles record.”
“He was going through this kind of primal scream therapy at the time,” Murphy continued. “He was just 29 or 30; they’d just broken up. Every single song on it is perfect and beautiful. It’s got ‘God’, ‘Mother’, and ‘Isolation’, and I think it’s an underappreciated record, but I go back to it over and over again.”
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