QSC Aspiring Interview: Odhrán Murphy on Love Island breakthrough & new EP ‘Stuck In The Middle’

Dubbed ‘Paul Mescal with a guitar’, Odhrán Murphy is an Irish singer-songwriter fusing folk, country, and acoustic music. Since releasing his debut single Stars in 2022, he has opened for Mumford and Sons to 20,000 people, performed at the Great Escape Festival, and had his songs heard on Love Island. He gives the lowdown on his new EP, Stuck In The Middle, ahead of his upcoming headline tours of Ireland and the UK.

Murphy grew up amidst the beautiful landscapes of County Armagh, Northern Ireland, where the countryside has greatly informed his music. In fact, he features the natural scenery of the region in all his videos and artist photos so heavily that the local tourism board should probably be paying him. His penchant for folky melodies and acoustic guitars makes all the more sense when you witness all the hills, trees and lakes he spends time around.

Away from the natural world, he’s been steadily building up a huge online following, accumulating 2.6 million likes and 120k followers on TikTok, next to 430k monthly listeners on Spotify. It all started with his debut single Stars — he asked his audience if he thought the song would work on Love Island, who then diligently started tagging all the relevant people. Lo and behold, the song was then used on the hit dating programme.

He was doing music around his day job as a Gaelic teacher, but his single releases became increasingly viral online, with his third single, Limitless Love, also conquering the TikTok algorithm, and currently close to nine million Spotify streams.

“In County Armagh, we've got a lot of beautiful scenery,” Murphy says. “There’s a forest walk right beside my house, and that's where I go down to write music most of the time. It's like a getaway where I can just go and sit down and write beside the river, which calms me as well. The videos that you're seeing online are in County Meath, and we rented an old cottage on Airbnb. The cottage was absolutely amazing, but the surroundings were even better. We were able to shoot two music videos down there and shoot a lot of promotional content for the new EP. Ireland's full of beautiful, beautiful places. It's definitely not short of that.”

2022 was the year Murphy formally debuted as a releasing artist with Stars. The piano-led ballad is one of his more synth and pop-infused numbers, prior to the acoustic guitar becoming one of the more defining characteristics of his music.

“I didn't really know what I was doing myself,” he says of his debut single, which he released independently. “I didn't really know what tools to use or who to ask. I was self-releasing and trying to promote my stuff on TikTok. I asked my followers, ‘Do you think this song would be good in a scene in Love Island?’ And then everybody just started tagging Virgin TV and ITV. One of the producers from the show sent me an email and said, ‘We've seen your TikTok, and we love your song.’ You wouldn't believe the number of Shazams that you actually get from that. That was when I started thinking, ‘Ok, you're not doing too bad here, there's something in this music.’”

More pinch yourself moments would come for Murphy, especially when he was booked to open for Mumford and Sons in Dublin in front of 20,000 people. Knowing he grew up listening to the hit-making folk-rock band, you can forgive him for letting out a scream of excitement in a public place when he found out it was happening.

“It’s definitely my favourite gig. Growing up listening to those guys was a treat for all of us, and being able to share the stage with them was a really special moment. It just all flew by at the time. I wish I could go back and relive it and take it all in. It’s my biggest show to date as well — whether that ends up being the best thing I do, I don't really mind.

“I was actually in upstate New York at the time when I found out; my booking agent had texted me and said, ‘Look at your emails.’ The email said, ‘You've got the green light to support Mumford and Sons at Malahide Castle.’ I was just about to catch my flight home, and I just remember screaming in the airport. People were probably looking at me, going, ‘What is he doing?’”

Murphy’s new six-track EP, Stuck In The Middle, dropped at the end of July and features the kind of hearty stomping and guitar strumming you might expect from someone who wears his Lumineers and Mumford and Sons influences proudly on his sleeve. It opens with its first single, Close To You, with the appropriate amount of group, ‘hey!’ shouts and sing-along ‘ooh’ moments.

On the relatively spontaneous way in which the EP came together, he says of the title track: “Stuck in the Middle came out when I was going through a lot of hard things in life, and I decided, why not throw this song right in the middle of the EP? The whole EP is based on love and real-life scenarios that have happened in my life. The ups and downs people go through in life, whether you're a musician or in your work. I definitely think that people can relate to the Stuck in the Middle EP.”

Recorded in something of a dream scenario for Murphy in locations like Nashville and Woodstock in the States, this EP and his burgeoning career are the fruits of him diligently sticking to his craft when people around him were asking when he’d get a “proper job.” In fact, the former teacher has a song on the EP about just that. Kerosene opens with an excellently produced intro with touches of ambience, before the singer asks in the verse, “What if I don’t fit inside the box they made me carry?”

“I was working in a primary school, teaching children the Irish language. And at that time, I was getting a lot of questions on what I wanted to do in life. And people were like, ‘Are you still doing the music thing? And I tried to explain that I'm always going to be doing the music thing, you know? Kerosene was about proving to those people that I can do music as a job. People would always ask me, ‘Are you going to get a proper job?’ I'd say, ‘Well, music is a proper job.’ And it was hard to get that message around to them.”

Ahead of his October UK tour with stops in Glasgow, Manchester, London, and more, Murphy is embarking on a grassroots tour of pubs across Ireland in August, and the pubs he’s stopping off at will be announced on his social media. The Guinness will, presumably, be flowing.

“Myself and a few buddies who play music are going to hire a camper van,” he says. “We're going to go from north to south, from the very top of Ireland to the bottom of the country. It's a road trip, calling into a few places, and I'm going to be promoting it on my social media, that I'm calling into these bars. It's a get together and a celebration of my EP. But also, I want people to come and sing songs with me as well. And maybe have a sneaky Guinness as well.”

When asked to ponder what the phrase Play Out Loud means to him, Murphy says that “I suppose my music is for road trips, and you can definitely get into the car and play my songs out loud. But I also think it's a good phrase for people who struggle to talk, and that's where music comes in. I definitely like to tell my stories through music, especially back in the time where I struggled with my mental health, and I was able to put that through a song. So ‘play out loud’ for me is also telling stories, and it's for people who are afraid to talk. There's so many stories within music.”

To catch Odhrán Murphy out on the road, his happy place, the two options are one of the big venues on his UK October tour including the Courtyard Theatre in London, or you can go for the intimate community vibes if you can catch him at one of his pub performances in Ireland. Either way, you can get stuck into his landmark new EP, Stuck In The Middle, wherever you get your music.