FEATURE IMAGE BY PETER O’DOHERTY, @irishphotographer1.
Shane Hourihane is a talented 23-year-old singer-songwriter from Castleknock in his fourth year studying vocals and songwriting at BIMM Dublin. As part of TN2’s Emerging Dublin Artists series, our music editor chatted to Shane about how he got into music, his thoughts on songwriting, plans for the year ahead and more.
Shane is charismatic onstage at the Zodiac Sessions in Bruxelles Bar (run by the much loved and vastly talented Barry “Jazz” Finnegan). His usual partner in crime, guitarist Odhrán Kennerk, is missing from the stage this time, so we sit facing Shane and his guitar alone. He laughs into the mic, and begins to talk about the inspiration for one of the songs he is about to sing, an original, entitled ‘Push Me’. “Basically, this song is about me messing up– so… yeah–” he tells the crowd, exhaling a brief chuckle as he begins to strum the chords, and one of his friends cheers from beside me.
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Shane and Odhrán
Shane told me that his passion for music began at around sixteen, when in Transition Year, he auditioned for the Belvedere Musical Evening, and was picked. He performed for 600 people that night, with the majority of those onstage with him being two years his senior. From that night onwards, he’d caught the bug for performing. He picked up the guitar, teaching himself by watching videos on YouTube. He started putting vastly successful videos up on his Facebook and YouTube accounts, and at around eighteen started to write his own songs. He was contacted, he recalls, by two guys who were “pretty big on Facebook at the time”, and asked to join their boyband. And so he did. He smiles, recounting UK tours, gigs in Ireland, shows in the Grand Social, and all the attention that came with it. The band broke up in 2017, and Shane has been going solo since, recording, releasing and performing tracks under the name Shane H.
Shane with the boyband in 2016, Shane centre.
When asked what it was like out there as a solo artist, having been in the group, Shane shrugged his shoulders. “I mean, it’s more difficult at first, but definitely more exciting.” He described the increased pressure he felt when he began performing as a solo artist, feeling somewhat bare without his “mates up there for backup”. However, despite the increased pressure, he also described the experience as being more rewarding. Being forced into the deep end has forced him to adapt, and to learn how to deal with these new situations. He describes the solo career as, in his experience, leaving more room for creativity, and more room for freedom, and for those reasons, as being more rewarding and more exhilarating. ‘Save Me’ and ‘I Need It’ are the two tracks which he’s released to Spotify, and would both be at home on any radio station, or any trending playlist. Both are bitingly catchy, fitting into the acoustic pop genre. (Seriously — you’ll have them on replay!)
We chatted about the creative process for writing these tracks, and others. He affirmed that the melody, the music and the sounds came first. After he had the sonar background set down, then he’d begin to think of lyrics. For him, his lyrics tend to be drawn from personal memories or experiences. The ‘notes’ section of his phone is littered with songs like this. The next step for Shane is either to perform live, or to head to the recording studio. Some songs make it to the Zodiac Sessions before they make it to Spotify, and some vice versa. Shane tells me that while he couldn’t pick one over the other, he loves being in the studio, “I love seeing that transition as the sound changes and turns into a product!” He’s lucky enough to have friends who are well-versed on the production side of things, with different friends helping out on different tracks. We talked about the fact that as a young artist trying to break onto the scene nowadays, he had to do everything himself – he had no manager or publicist overseeing things. On the one hand, that means that he has full creative control over his image and the work that he puts out – music video ideas, production style and the photoshoots all come down to him. On the other hand, it is a lot for a college student to juggle, while holding down college itself and a part-time job. Shane does a good job of juggling these responsibilities, however, with a strong social media following, a continual flow of new tracks and regular live gigs throughout Dublin (he can be found most weeks at Zodiac Sessions in Bruxelles, performing in front of a packed pub).
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The year ahead, according to Shane, will be a big one. We can look forward to more gigs than ever, more tracks than ever, and hopefully an album to boot. I expect his charm onstage, catchy melodies and striking lyrics will earn him a lot more fans this year, and well-deservedly. A hit single – “just one, that’s all I need” – he tells me, laughing. When asked what his biggest goal is, he smiles again. “3Arena headline show,” he says, spreading his hands, biting back a wider smile, “supported by Ed Sheeran — how hilarious would that be!” Keep an eye out, Shane H is a name you’ll see in lights.
Shane can be found on various social media under the following handles:
Spotify – Shane H
Instagram – @shaneh16
Facebook – Shane H Music
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