(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EURO-COUNTRY")
CMAT: (Singing in Irish).
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson has been called Ireland's country pop princess, though most know her as CMAT. Her latest album, "Euro-Country," opens with a poem she wrote in her early 20s. The words are in Irish. It is dark and questioning. Translated it says...
CMAT: What am I to do if I'm kind of not with you? I have an empty head and a new personality. I become more invisible as you're gone from my life. There's nothing left in the mirror. Will I be beautiful bald?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EURO-COUNTRY")
CMAT: (Singing in Irish).
There's just a great history of, like, Irish women being bald and, like, shaving their heads in retaliation of society.
SIMON: Sinead O'Connor may be the best-known, but she was not the first.
CMAT: We have this pirate queen from the 1500s, and she shaves her head to be accepted as the leader of the pirate gang. And so I had this theory of shaving my head for a while, but then I thought, no. I'll leave Sinead that mark. She can do it (laughter).
SIMON: "Euro-Country" mixes that sense of history with CMAT's own sharp humor, whether she's mocking the British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver or in one song, where she sings, Lord, let that Tesla crash. In the title track, she turns back to Ireland's 2008 economic crash - calls out the country's prime minister at the time, Bertie Ahern.
You grew up during a troubling period in Irish history, didn't you?
CMAT: You'd be hard-pressed to find a period in Irish history in the last a hundred years that wasn't troubling.
SIMON: (Laughter).
CMAT: And mine is probably not so bad by the standards of some other ones. I kind of turned 10, 11, 12 at the period when Ireland was hit with a very, very, very bad economic crisis. The bottom fell out of the banking system. And overnight, all these people that I had thought of as being the richest people in my village lost everything. But it didn't happen to my family directly, so I always wondered if I could write about it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EURO-COUNTRY")
CMAT: (Singing) All the big boys, all the Berties, all the envelopes, yeah, they hurt me. I was 12 when the das (ph) started killing themselves all around me.
SIMON: Well, what do you want your audience to take from it now - your recollections of those times?
CMAT: I wasn't really thinking about the audience, to be honest. I don't know that I ever really do. I'm just regularly trying to make sense of the world around me. I'm a big fan of being like, look, everything that you're seeing and witnessing on this tour is all as a result of me holding a grudge for about 20 years against one specific Irish politician. And it's been the most amazing experience of my life, and I believe that political anger and kind of holding a grudge and, like, not letting injustices go can really result in a positive community experience. And you can kind of see, like, resistance as an act of joy.
SIMON: What drew you to country music?
CMAT: Country music is everywhere in Ireland, particularly when I was growing up. It was very, very present. I'm going to say, like, Johnny Cash died in 2003, and his death kind of spurned this intense revival, particularly in Ireland. Like, when I was growing up, I obviously had no idea how the concept of celebrity worked living in a village. So I just thought that he was like Britney Spears. Like, I thought he would be, like, going to the VMAs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WALK THE LINE")
JOHNNY CASH: (Singing) I keep a close watch on this heart of mine.
CMAT: And then the film came out, "Walk The Line." And I illegally downloaded the soundtrack onto my MP3 player, which my mom bought me from Lidl.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WALK THE LINE")
JOAQUIN PHOENIX: (As Johnny Cash, singing) Because you're mine, I walk the line.
CMAT: And I became obsessed with it. And actually, to be honest, illegal downloading of music was a really big jumping-off point, and I was doing it a lot when I was like 9, 10, 11 years old. And I remember there's, like, this one instance which is I was really into Dolly Parton. And we were going to go on a holiday to County Clare, and I downloaded the song "Jolene." And when I sat in the back of my mom's Previa (laughter), I pressed play, and it wasn't Dolly Parton.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JOLENE")
THE WHITE STRIPES: (Singing) Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene.
CMAT: And I hated it. By the end of the week's holiday, I was like, this is my favorite thing ever. I love this. Who is it? And it took me a while to figure out that it was, in fact, The White Stripes covering "Jolene."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JOLENE")
THE WHITE STRIPES: (Singing) With flaming locks of auburn hair, with ivory skin and eyes of emerald green.
CMAT: I kind of think illegal downloading of music is responsible for my music taste being so all over the place.
SIMON: I think the statute of limitations has probably passed, so you're all right, legally.
CMAT: If Jack White wants to sue me, he's more than welcome. That'd be really good for me, actually.
SIMON: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JOLENE")
THE WHITE STRIPES: (Singing) Please don't take him even though you can.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE JAMIE OLIVER PETROL STATION")
CMAT: (Singing) I was at the Jamie Oliver petrol station. I needed deli, but God, I hate him.
SIMON: What's your problem with Jamie Oliver?
CMAT: (Laughter) Jamie Oliver kind of represents Britishness, and I think he represents - Irish people simultaneously are very anti-British but also, on some level, want to be a part of an empire. And I put all of this on him and decided that I hated him. And then I actually had to take a beat and go, hang on. He actually hasn't done anything except make some food on the television.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE JAMIE OLIVER PETROL STATION")
CMAT: (Singing) The man's got kids, and they wouldn't like this.
He agreed to be in the video, even after all of that. And he really wanted to do a good job of the drumming in the video. He's like, I just want to do a good job for you. I just want to do a good job.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE JAMIE OLIVER PETROL STATION")
CMAT: (Vocalizing).
SIMON: You'll be touring the U.S. this spring and summer.
CMAT: I will.
(SOUNDBITE OF CMAT SONG, "TAKE A SEXY PICTURE OF ME")
SIMON: One of your songs, "Take A Sexy Picture Of Me," is already quite popular.
(SOUNDBITE OF CMAT SONG, "TAKE A SEXY PICTURE OF ME")
CMAT: (Singing) Ever since I was a little girl, I only wanted to be sexy, 9 years old, tryin' to wax my legs with tape.
SIMON: Why do you think that song caught on with so many people?
CMAT: I think it was just very honest. In my songs and in my music, I've always done the very Irish thing of trying to make myself look bad...
SIMON: Ha.
CMAT: ...And make myself the jester and make myself the fool, 'cause that's kind of the tradition of Irish writing. And I think this is the first song where I didn't do that. And it's the first song where I was actually like, you know what? These people are horrible to me.
SIMON: Who are these people?
CMAT: Well, this song is basically dealing with the fact that when I became more successful and more known in the U.K., I'd be featured on, like, the television, and comments sections all across social media, basically, just filled about how people hated the way I looked because I was too fat. I was too ugly. I was too weird-looking to be a pop star. Obviously, I'm trying really hard not to swear on NPR, but they really (laughter) were terrible. And so the song is a big F you to them. And I'm basically saying that the reason that you have these beauty standards and the reason that you think I don't look good is because I look like a woman, and your beauty standards skew very young. And that's a problem that you have that you need to get sorted out, and I haven't done anything wrong.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TAKE A SEXY PICTURE OF ME")
CMAT: (Singing) Oh, baby, heed my solution. And take a sexy picture, take a sexy picture of me.
SIMON: No matter how successful you are, you can still be hurt.
CMAT: Yeah, of course.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TAKE A SEXY PICTURE OF ME")
CMAT: (Singing) Or like 5, or like 2, like a baby. Whoever it is that you're gonna love so you'll be nice to me.
SIMON: Are you enjoying life?
CMAT: Am I enjoying life? I mean, yeah. The shows kind of seem to get better and better the more we tour, and the audiences are kind of getting more and more into the cult of CMAT as it goes on. It used to be in order to play a home crowd, I'd have to play in Dublin or maybe London, where a lot of our friends are. And now I feel like we're playing a home crowd every night. It's crazy, and it's beautiful.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN A GOOD MAN CRIES")
CMAT: (Singing) With a cricket bat.
SIMON: CMAT now touring the U.S. - her latest album, "Euro-Country," is out now. Thank you so much for being with us.
CMAT: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN A GOOD MAN CRIES")
CMAT: (Singing) You know what I'm like. You don't deserve it. Veruca Salt, her just desserts. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
