You can measure Daniel O’Donnell’s incredible 40-year career through his impressive sales feats if you like: here’s a singer who’s achieved 12 gold-selling albums and another seven which have gone silver. Daniel has scored 16 Top 10 albums and 11 Top 30 singles, including the gorgeous Top 10 hit Give A Little Love.
Go to a concert and witness the rapturous response that shows the admiration Daniel O’Donnell engenders in people, a closeness to his audience legendary among fellow performers, evidence of how Daniel O’Donnell has been a true phenomenon ever since his debut album The Boy From Donegal was released in 1984.
Perhaps the biggest testament, at least in statistics, to how Daniel O’Donnell has stayed at the top of his game for so long is that he’s the only artist to have placed a different album in the chart every year since the gold-selling From The Heart launched his career in the UK in 1988.
Daniel’s current album Through The Years, released in Oct 11, 2024, is the perfect go-to album for Daniel fans both new and old, featuring 42 tracks across his 40-year career plus a bonus live CD of his concert recorded at The Millennium Forum in Derry in 2023. “My music is all interlinked,” explains Daniel. “There’s a thread running through it. Country, Irish, rock & roll: it all hangs together so that none of it is out of place. If you pull at the thread of my songs, none of it will fall out.”
For people who recognized the variety and hope at the center of Daniel’s music, the audiences kept growing. International success in North America soon followed, with Daniel revealing: “As I had in the UK, I started in Irish community places like Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. But now I mainly play the Midwest in America. I’d have to look for Irish people at my American shows now.” The deluxe edition of Through The Years adds a live disc, recorded at a concert at Derry’s Millennium Forum. “Playing live and the interaction with the audience is what I’ve always enjoyed most,” insists Daniel. “All the rest is a by-product of live shows.” Nonetheless, the instinct for what worked well in the studio has continued. He beat Josh Groban and Westlife to recording You Raise Me Up, commenting of his 2003 hit: “I thought there was something special about that song. I remember saying: ‘If this isn’t a hit for me, it’s going to be huge for somebody else.’” Daniel even became a cult club success in Ireland thanks to his 2011 version of singer-songwriter Billy O’Dwyer’s tune Tipperary Girl – a move that delighted Daniel, who grins: “That was unlikely! It was incredible, but young people in Ireland are open to all types of music and it’s an up-tempo song.”
Success has led to friendships with Cliff Richard and Loretta Lynn and enabled Daniel to record with county great Charley Pride on an uplifting version of Crystal Chandeliers. If the boy from Donegal couldn’t have seen that coming when he started 40 years ago, he’s having far too much fun to stop now. As he says: “I’ve always enjoyed what I do. Now, I’m just enjoying all of it.” So will you: here’s the perfect introduction to a singer whose music is the perfect way to enjoy all life has to offer.
