By Keith Duggans
TEN YEARS into his career, Daniel O’Donnell released a song that fell somewhere between a soaked- handkerchief waltz and an indictment of modern society. You may remember it, even if you don’t care to admit it.
Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love? was originally a swooning ballad penned by BJ Thomas, back when the Co Donegal man was cutting his debut single. But in Daniel’s interpretation, there was not a hint of a question in his delivery, rather a sweet and resigned fatalism in his voice that made it clear that OFL, in so far as it ever existed, had vanished for good. The kids weren’t listening but, like so many of O’Donnell’s songs, the record proved a hardy bird anyhow. It peaked at number 21 on the UK charts, miraculous in a year when Ace of Bass provided the prevailing sound on the airwaves and in nightclubs.
Through the steady flow of resilient and heart-tugging minor classics of yesteryear that O’Donnell has been crooning for a quarter of a century, there is something about that 1993 cover which seems central to his everlasting popularity. This was the year when the Dáil passed an act to decriminalise homosexuality, when the Charlton soccer revolution was about to have its last great shout and when the star of Kurt Kobain was burning furiously.
To whom was Daniel singing? The critics sniff that the O’Donnell sound ranks among the worst crimes in the jam-packed middle-of-the-road catalogue. But O’Donnell has been cast so far away – barred for life – from the gates of fashion that his followers cannot be labelled as the middle of anything. Daniel-heads are extremists. The O’Donnell audience – transatlantic in profile nowadays – is surely the most derided group in all of music culture. Their devotion to the Kincasslagh man has a cult dimension, and anyone who has seen the concert footage knows that he has the power to transport them to whatever dance hall, whatever lost paradise, they recreate under the spell of his stagecraft. The thing is, he is not just singing to the same groupies.
Many of the original crowd that followed Daniel’s first flush of success in 1983 have inevitably gone to the Grand Ole Opry in the sky since. As with the apparitions of Knock, a new wave of believers keeps on showing up. Year in and year out, O’Donnell has sent some home sweating and others with pacemakers in a state of high duress, but his act never failed to deliver. Now aged 47, he packs out the prestige venues in Ireland, England and the country music shrines of the American Midwest.
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