How Music Works: Louise McSharry on her love of new music and radio

RTÉ 2FM presenter Louise McSharry always had plans to do something in the public eye. As a child growing up in Chicago, her performative ambitions weren’t exactly small scale.

“I was sure I was going to be the president, an Oscar-winning actress, a Grammy-winning singer and I wanted to be in musicals on Broadway,” she says.

A love of music is at the backbone of her time growing up, which has contributed to her current job in radio, as presenter of the new music radio show on 2FM from Sundays to Thursdays from 8pm to 10pm.

An avid music fan, McSharry listened to everything she could get her hands on from Fiona Apple to Wilson Philips to Alanis Morissette. Her dad had the entire Nirvana back catalogue and her mother loved Mary Black and Maura O’Connell.

“In Chicago, you were either into dance music and you listened to this radio station called B96,” she remembers. “Or you were into alternative rock music and you listened to Q101. I actually really liked both so I would listen to both of them religiously.”

Determined career
McSharry's career has been marked by a determination. As a researcher with Newstalk, she spent four-and-a-half years at the station after she was initially invited to do three weeks work experience. When she followed Dan Healy to iRadio to do marketing and PR, she tested so well in pilots with other auditioned presenters, they offered her the breakfast radio slot.

Healy joined 2FM in 2013 as the head of the station, when the listenership was flagging and there was an identity and audience crisis. McSharry was brought in as part of Healy’s plan to refocus the station. She presented the weekend breakfast show and covered Ryan Tubridy in his absence before he moved to Radio 1.

In 2014, McSharry was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and she took time off her career to receive treatment. Now having won her battle with cancer, she has settled back into her radio show slot over the past year.

New music show
Her current show prioritises breaking new music to the listeners from a mix of genres: pop, electronic pop, hip-hop, rock, R&B and soul.

“Anything that sounds fresh and new,” she says.

Unlike the daytime radio shows, McSharry’s is not playlisted which means she is fully in charge of what is played on air.

“I had to fight a little bit to get carte blanche in what I played at the start, but now I have huge support and trust from 2FM.

“I was very conscious of playing new stuff I believed in but which wouldn’t sound out of place to a 2FM listener. It still has to be accessible. I listen with my own ears and also what a listener might like. Not everything I like is right for the show.”

McSharry sources her music from online recommendations, social media, blogs and other new music shows. She screengrabs things on her phone to remind her to listen back later.

Surprisingly, McSharry doesn’t get sent a lot of new music directly and thinks that labels and PR need to catch up to how new music is filtered out into the world.

“Sometimes I get asked by labels and PR to play new songs I’ve already been playing for six weeks and retired due to the new music nature of my show.

“It’s all well and good to try and have an impact date for a single, but there are still different dates for different territories and we can all hear new music at the same time. That’s not how music works anymore. If a song is being played in the US or UK, it’s going to be picked up everywhere else.”

Irish music
A positive change has been an increased playback of Irish artists on her show.

“I’m definitely hearing more from Irish artists now than a year ago, which is great as there’s so much exciting Irish music happening right now. For a long time, it wasn’t getting sent to me. People maybe didn’t realise my show would play them on 2FM.”

McSharry cites Daithí, Hare Squead and Girl Band as examples of Irish artists who are doing fresh things.

“I really like that music is diversifying because the country is diversifying,” she says. “You’re getting really interesting blends of hip-hop with electronic music or hip-hop with guitar-based music, which excites me.”

2FM's renewed strategy
McSharry's show is the embodiment of the music revamp instigated at 2FM in the past three years.

“The station had been in flux,” says McSharry. “It hadn’t had the chance to settle and think about its identity.”

McSharry says that 2FM is now aimed at a 15-34-year-old audience. It has a new music strategy and there’s been more of a focus on homegrown Irish music.

“We have new imaging and our tagline is ‘The Sound of the Nation’. The idea is that it will reflect that, it will support new artists in a way that perhaps it wasn’t before. I think that’s great for 2FM because we are in a position of privilege, as a heritage station. We should use our position to promote new Irish artists and we now are.

“If you listen to now compared to what was played out six months ago, it’s really noticeable,” she says, citing the likes of Otherkin, Daithi, Walking On Cars as artists who wouldn’t previously have got a look in.

McSharry might not have reached those lofty accolades she aspired to a youngster but she has a strong career, anchored by radio, which has expanded into TV programming, and in June this year, she will release an autobiography Fat Chance: My Life in Ups, Downs and Crisp Sandwiches.

Not to be outdone, she’d like to put on gigs in connection with the show and would like to DJ more.

“My official work life in 2FM is all music which I love. In a way, it’s a holiday to everything else. How lucky am I to listen to tunes every day and then go and play tunes on the radio?”