Irish songwriter, and founding member of The Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO), Brendan Graham has now officially been included in an exclusive club with the world’s top songwriters.
His song You Raise Me Up, with music by Secret Garden’s Rolf Lovland, has been awarded ‘’Million-Air’’ status by the American Performing Rights Society, BMI.
Only 3900 (0.06%) songs of the 6.5 million works, which BMI represent, have ever been awarded Million-Air certificates. To be included in this exclusive roster a song must have been broadcast over one million times on American radio. This definition equals at least 50,000 broadcast hours, or more than 5.7 years of continuous airplay.
The Mayo-based songwriter now joins previous Million-Air recipients like song-writing legends John Lennon, Van Morrison, Enya, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Mick Jagger, Ben E King, Sting, Otis Redding and Roy Orbison.
Other IMRO songwriters who have achieved BMI’s Million-Air status, include The Corrs (Breathless), Mick Hanly (Past The Point of Rescue) and Ronan Keating (The Long Goodbye), written with Paul Brady.
You Raise Me Up, first recorded by Secret Garden, featuring Brian Kennedy, has become one of the biggest selling songs in the history of popular music, with over three hundred recordings by some of the world’s biggest acts – Josh Groban, Westlife, IL Divo, Paul Potts, Celtic Woman, and has racked up sales of over 80 million copies. It has never been out of the charts somewhere in the world in the past six years. It has also become one of the most successful songs of all time in sheet music sales, being continuously at No. 1 for the past five years, in the USA’s Sheet Music Bestseller Charts, in four different categories: Pop, Adult Contemporary, Pop Choral and Downloads (it is the most downloaded song in sheet music format of all time).
It has been performed at the Winter and Summer Olympics, Superbowl, the Nobel Peace Prize, Opening of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the White House and the State Funeral of George Best.
Brendan Graham will also be remembered as the man who penned Ireland’s two last Eurovision winners – Rock ‘n’ Roll Kids (1994) and The Voice (1996), while other of his songs, like Winter, Fire & Snow; Crucan na bPaiste, and Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears have been recorded by a broad array of artistes, ranging from within the Irish and Scottish tradition, to New York Metropolitan Opera star Young Ok Shin.
He has recently commenced writing for radio and his two pieces for RTE’s Sunday Miscellany, appear in the recently launched, Sunday Miscellany: A Selection 2006-2008, alongside work from Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin and Joseph O’Connor.
As a songwriter, he has similarly enjoyed both popular and critical success, with songs recorded by a diverse range of artistes – Josh Groban, Westlife, IL Divo; New York Metropolitan’s Young Ok Shin, Sissel, Celtic Woman, Secret Garden, Elaine Paige; Australia’s Kate Ceberano, Brian Kennedy, Eimear Quinn, Katie McMahon, Anuna, Daniel O’Donnell, Ronan Tynan, Katherine Jenkins, Russell Watson, The Irish Tenors, Nashville’s Hal Ketchum, Tommy Cash and jazz vocalist & No.1 hit songwriter for Garth Brooks – Benita Hill; as well as acclaimed artistes within the Scottish and Irish traditions, such as Roisin Elsafty, Fionnuala Gill, Karen Matheson, Alyth McCormack, Sean Keane and Dervish.
In an article about the song tradition of Ireland, legendary scribe Con Houlihan wrote…
‘Some of the best poetry being produced in this country today is in the form of song – Christy Moore and Brendan Graham and Jimmy McCarthy are touched by genius.’ Evening Herald, 26 Mar 08.
Whilst in a full page, feature article, the Irish Times described Graham as a ‘Musical Midas in the Mayo Silence.’ Irish Times, 20 Dec 07.
Born in County Tipperary in 1945 – and an Industrial Engineer by profession – Graham only became a full-time songwriter, upon being made redundant in 1993.
A previous Chairman of IMRO, a position he held for nine years, he was also a member of FORTE, the Government Task Force to advance the Irish Music Industry. He was the recipient of the inaugural IMRO Lifetime Achievement Award, with Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, referring to his ‘outstanding contribution to Ireland’s music industry’.
A former Irish Youth international at basketball and a recipient of Western Australia’s Lansing Bagnall State Award for business studies, he now lives in County Mayo.
Ends
29th October, 2008
For further information contact:
Keith Johnson, Director of Marketing & Membership (IMRO)
Tel: 01-6614844 Fax: 01-6763125 E-mail: keith.johnson@nullimro.ie
Additional Notes for Editors:
Graham’s debut novel The Whitest Flower (1998, HarperCollins, London, Toronto, Sydney), a documentary novel of Ireland’s Great Famine, was a No. 2 bestseller in Ireland and was translated into a number of languages. It received widespread critical acclaim:
The Whitest Flower has appeared on the Women’s Studies curriculum at MIT and the Irish Studies curriculum at the College of Charleston.
The Whitest Flower and The Element of Fire (HarperCollins 2001) are listed as Support Fiction on Ireland’s Leaving Certificate – History Syllabus.
His third book – The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night (HarperCollins 2005), follows Ellen O’Malley, heroine of the previous two books, to the field hospitals and killing fields of the American Civil War.
Although there are other songs about Ellis Island, Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears, written by Graham after first visiting Ellis Island in 1995, and which tells the story of Annie Moore, Ellis Island’s first registered immigrant, and seems to have become the anthem for this historic occasion in Irish – American history. No doubt helped by Irish Tenor, Ronan Tynan’s emotive performance of it live on an episode of hit show Third Watch and it’s subsequent performances for Presidents, Mayors of New York and most recently at moving ceremony in New York to unveil a memorial to mark the resting place of Annie Moore in Calvary Cemetery.
You Raise Me Up is published by Peermusic UK.
