Eleanor McEvoy, an Irish songwriter live in Penang

The introduction to Eleanor McEvoy came when my dear friend Maggie Territt asked if I could design the streamer, posters and tickets for a concert she was organising. The show was to take place at Healy Mac's Irish Bar & Restaurant, part of a series of Irish cultural events around St Patrick’s season.

So, like anyone curious about a performer they had never heard of, I went online and began listening. Her voice was pleasant but not the kind that grabs you immediately. It sat comfortably in the mid-range, conversational, almost intimate. There were no dramatic vocal fireworks. No towering crescendos. No big pop hooks.

I messaged Maggie honestly. I told her McEvoy had the sort of voice that felt personal, almost like someone telling you a story across a small table. I noted that she might work better in an intimate venue with listeners who appreciated storytelling and folk sensibilities. I even told Maggie that in today’s musical landscape, audiences are used to artists like Ed Sheeran or Calum Scott, singers with big melodic hooks and immediate emotional impact.

However, on the night of the concert, McEvoy proved to be far more than those earlier impressions suggested. I had missed the forest for the trees.

A childhood steeped in music

To understand the artist who came to our shores, it helps to begin decades earlier in Dublin. Eleanor McEvoy was born in 1967 and raised in Cabra, a working-class neighbourhood on Dublin’s north side. Music entered her life almost as soon as she could reach a keyboard. By the age of four she was already playing piano, taught initially by her sister. At eight she took up the violin, and classical music quickly became part of her world.

The family home was filled with music. Her brother’s record collection ranged from rock acts like Deep Purple and Rory Gallagher, while her sister preferred Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. Their mother listened constantly to the radio, where the voice of the great Irish tenor John McCormack drifted through the house. Their father preferred the symphonic giants like Mahler and Wagner. The result was a childhood immersed in music of every kind.

McEvoy later described growing up with a brother and a sister in a home where they often played music together. Yet despite this musical upbringing, becoming a professional musician was not the path her parents initially imagined. “They wanted me to become a national school teacher", she later recalled. But McEvoy had other ideas.

Trinity College and the classical discipline

Her determination eventually brought her to Trinity College Dublin, where she studied music. By day she attended lectures in composition and theory. By night she played in pit orchestras and music clubs around the city. She graduated with an honours degree in music and was accepted into the prestigious RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. For four years she performed as a classical violinist. The work was steady, structured around rehearsals and concerts, and it taught her the discipline and focus required of an orchestral musician.

Somewhere beneath the cadence of orchestral life, the ambition to become a full-fledged songwriter was beginning to resonate.

Chasing a dream

After leaving the orchestra, she travelled to New York. Armed with little more than a violin and a pocketful of dreams, she began busking in Manhattan’s Union Square. She quickly discovered how tough it could be. New York in the late 1980s was harsh, and she later described the experience as lonely and sometimes frightening, with people even attempting to steal the money she collected in her violin case. Those challenges shaped her into a more resilient and confident performer.

She returned to Ireland determined to build a career writing her own songs.

The song that changed everything

In 1990, while living in a modest bedsit in Rathmines, Dublin, McEvoy wrote a song that would alter the course of her life. The song was Only a Woman’s Heart. The melody had been lingering in her mind for some time, and the lyrics came together during a period when her mood was low and life felt uncertain.

Two years later, the song became the title track of the album A Woman's Heart. The record featured several leading Irish female artists and went on to become the best-selling album in Irish chart history, selling more than 750,000 copies in Ireland alone. Suddenly, McEvoy was no longer an unknown songwriter. She had written one of the most famous songs in modern Irish music.

A long career on her own terms

Success brought international recording contracts and a career that would eventually span more than three decades and 16 albums to date. Yet McEvoy never followed the conventional path of pop stardom. Instead, she became a touring songwriter, a musician who built her reputation through live performances, intimate venues and a loyal audience that valued storytelling over spectacle.

In interviews she has spoken openly about the challenges of being a woman in the music industry. In one interview with the Irish Independent (20 December 2020), she recalled recording sessions where male musicians were paid in cash while she was given a bottle of cheap perfume instead. It was a small but telling moment in a career spent navigating an industry that often underestimated her.

Live in Penang

All of this history embodied the woman who walked onto the small stage at Healy Mac’s in Straits Quay on Monday evening, 9 March 2026. There were no elaborate lights. No backing band. Just McEvoy and her instruments—two guitars, a keyboard, and a violin.

Organised by Maggie Territt, President of the Penang Irish Association and the Irish Chamber of Commerce Malaysia (Penang Chapter), the event attracted over 140 attendees. The evening featured two sets of around 45 minutes each, with a short interval in between. At a modest RM100, the ticket promised an experience that proved rather rewarding.

From the first song, it became clear that something the YouTube clips had failed to capture was unfolding in the room. Her voice, the same one I had once considered modest, radiated warmth and a charismatic intimacy that recordings simply could not convey. She spoke to the audience like an old friend, weaving stories through her songs and reflecting on life, heartbreak, friendship, and the way music can tug at the heartstrings.

She also spoke candidly about her life, including the painful end of a long-term relationship. She had believed her partner would be her life companion, only to discover that he had been living a secret life with another woman in another country. In interviews, she has described that heartbreak as “hell on earth”, a profoundly difficult period that later shaped new songs and, in the process, fostered a renewed sense of independence as well.

During that difficult time, McEvoy said she was surrounded by loyal friends who stood by her. Instead of angels descending from heaven, she realised that the real angels in her life were the people who showed up when she needed them most. She began calling them her “Scarlet Angels”, a phrase that later became a song. McEvoy herself described the song as “an homage to the healing power of friends and music".

The colour “scarlet” also has a small origin story. When McEvoy performed the orchestral concerts celebrating A Woman's Heart, the singers wore red on stage as a visual symbol of solidarity and strength. That image stayed with her, eventually becoming the metaphor for her Scarlet Angels.

The lyrics reflect that emotional journey. One line speaks of how, during difficult nights, those friends appeared like guardians: “Through my troubles out they came, scarlet angels in the rain". Wearing her heart on her sleeve is part of the raw, powerful honesty that defines her songs.

During the interval, complimentary cheese platters sponsored by The Wine Shop were served. Attendees also took the opportunity to order more drinks since service had been paused during the performance, and movement in the room had been kept to a minimum to ensure the music went uninterrupted.

The second half was equally engaging. For the final song, McEvoy closed the performance with Only a Woman’s Heart, a story of a woman navigating heartbreak and memory, knowing she would ultimately survive alone. When the last note faded, the applause rose immediately, demanding more. She returned for an encore, this time an a cappella number, accompanied only by the rattling tempo of two boxes of matches.

In a venue overlooking the Andaman Sea, thousands of kilometres from Dublin, the evening ended with the simple power of an Irish voice and storytelling that carried emotions through poignant lyrics and beautiful music. I am glad I was there to witness an artist unafraid to bare her heart on stage.

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Written and photographed by Adrian Cheah
© All Rights Reserved
9 March 2026

The style of her recordings

A true multi-instrumentalist, McEvoy often plays guitar, violin, keyboards, and piano herself, layering the instruments to create rich, intimate soundscapes. Many of her albums were released in audiophile formats such as SACD, appealing to listeners who value clarity, depth, and nuance. At the heart of her work is her literary songwriting: stories of love and loss, emotional resilience, independence, and reflections on Irish cultural.

Albums by Eleanor McEvoy

1. Eleanor McEvoy (1993)
2. What's Following Me? (1996)
3. Snapshots (1999)
4. Yola (2001)
5. Early Hours (2004)
6. Out There (2006)
7. Love Must Be Tough (2008)
8. Singled Out (2009)
9. I'd Rather Go Blonde (2010)
10. Alone (2011)
11. If You Leave (2013)
12. Stuff (2014)
13. Naked (2016)
14. The Thomas Moore Project (2017)
15. Forgotten Dreams (2019)
16. Gimme Some Wine (2021)