Sorcha Richardson

Support from Niamh Regan

Sorcha Richardson makes her NCH solo debut after a No. 1 Independent Irish album, a successful European and U.S. tour and an Ellie Goulding cover of her song Shark Eyes. 

Sorcha Richardson has been cultivating a fanbase for several years. Songs such as ‘Ruin Your Night’, ‘Honey’ and ‘Petrol Station’ are evocative vignettes of a moment in time which find the poetry in introspection. Her narrative songwriting connects with people who have shared similar tangled emotions. In November of 2019, Richardson released the biggest artistic statement of her career with her debut album, First Prize Bravery. The album won praise from The Irish Times, The Guardian, The Fader and Nylon, and was nominated for the RTÉ Choice Music Prize for Irish album of the year. It’s a collection of lyrical snapshots of life as a twenty-something, accompanied by the desires, doubts and developments that the decade delivers. 

Sorcha’s highly anticipated sophomore album, Smiling Like An Idiot, was released in 2022.

Written and recorded during the Covid 19 pandemic in her late grandparents’ house, the living room became an impromptu if elementary studio, and she delved into the “static process” of working alone, and then a month-long love/hate process of almost daily sessions via Zoom. 

“It mostly tracks one specific relationship,” she says. “It’s about falling in love with a person and a place, which in this case is Dublin, and how those two are interlinked.”
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Thematically it highlights a pursuit of happiness and the full-blown intensity of new love, but gaining something so life-affirming comes with the fear that it could just as easily be swept away. 

The beautifully beguiling magic of ‘Smiling Like An Idiot’ artfully articulates those moments in life that you don’t want to have to go through, but it emerges with the optimism that - somehow - things will work out for the best in time.

Presented by NCH