Singer Róisín O: Back to Black

To describe Róisín O’s career as a foregone conclusion may sound more than a little presumptuous, but there’s no doubt about it: the musician’s life has something of a ‘written in the stars’ quality to it.

The 27-year-old Dubliner has spent her life being known as Mary Black’s daughter and, in more recent years, Danny from The Coronas’ sister so you might expect that her sense of self-worth is subsequently diminished.

Not so: Róisín O’Reilly, to give her her full title, is a woman who knows what she wants in life.

O’Reilly may be part of the musical dynasty that was brought to prominence by her mum Mary and aunt Frances, but she has spent the last few years forging her own path through the world of showbiz. Still, there is no doubt that being surrounded by music from a young age had an effect on her aspirations.

“I would have spent a lot of time with my mam on tour,” she says, nodding. “So I have a lot of memories of being in venues and running around during soundcheck, or standing at the side of the stage and watching my mam play.

“Even when I was at home with The Black Family – or anytime we’d get together, when my uncles would be home from America – we’d have sing-songs and stuff. It was just normal in our house.”

Vocal harmony

Growing up the youngest of three children – her eldest brother Conor, a land surveyor, is “the black sheep” of the family, she says with a laugh – music played a prominent role, although not necessarily the Irish folk that you might expect.

Vocal harmony groups like Destiny's Child and TLC blended with the likes of Joni Mitchell to inform her folk-infused pop-rock sound to this day.

“It was always in my head to be a singer,” she says. “My mam told us how hard it was from a young age, but I felt in my head that’s what I always wanted to do. I did go to college and did a music degree and an arts degree as a back-up plan, but it was always the plan to get into music professionally.”

There are advantages and disadvantages of being known as Mary’s daughter or Danny’s sister.

You can imagine that the constant questions become tiresome and the spectre of her family history looms large, but she accepts that it has been a positive in many ways, too.

Ghostwriter

“I definitely can’t say that I didn’t benefit from having family in the industry; even, for example, having people who you can trust to give you advice and point you in the right direction,” she says.

“But at the same time, it is hard. People will form an opinion on me because they know who my brother is and they don’t like his music, or they don’t like my mother’s music. If people can make a judgement on my music on its own merit, that’s all I can ask for, really.”

She remains proud of her family ties, nonetheless. Last year, her relationship with her mum took on a new lease when she was the ghostwriter on Mary's autobiography Down the Crooked Road.

“The publisher came to my mam and asked her would she be interested in writing a book,” she says. “She said she would, but I think she found the idea of writing like that quite daunting. I love writing and I love books and reading – so my dad said, ‘Why don’t you sit down together and write a chapter, even?’.

“We’d sit down together, I’d be at the laptop and she’d reel off these stories. They were all her stories and it’s her voice in the book, of course, but I suppose I pulled them out of her.

“It was an amazing thing to hear all those stories, because I thought I’d heard them all before but hearing about her life on the road and how it was tough to do it with kids; it was a really lovely thing to do with her, actually.”

Heartache and happiness

Although she says that writing a book is something that she’d be consider further down the line, at the moment there is her musical career to concentrate on.

Her debut album The Secret Life of Blue was released to acclaim in 2012 and at the moment, she is writing songs for "its long due follow-up" next year.

Róisín O released two singles, Synchronicity and If You Got Love earlier this year, and says that her new material is a change in direction.

“It’s a step away from the first album,” she says, nodding. “It’s a little bit less acoustic and more electric, more synths – but it’ll have a folk influence and I think my voice will always show that.

“There are a lot of songs just beneath the surface, so after this tour is over we’re really going o knuckle down and get into writing over Christmas and the New Year. It’s gonna be a mix of heartache and happiness.

“I suppose I write a lot of songs about the journey of being a musician and the doubts and the joys that come with that.”

With that journey in mind, there is no grand plan in place, she says. “I love what I do, and if I can keep doing it for another five years, or 10 years, or 15 years – that’s my goal, really.

“To be able to sing my own music for an audience that’s there to see me is the dream; I don’t care if it’s in the 3Arena or it’s in Whelan’s for the rest of my life. I don’t have crazy ambitions to be mad famous. I just want to be a singer, really.”

Róisín O plays Whelan’s, Dublin tonight (Saturday 7th).