Singer- songwriter Megan O’Neill told David Hennessy about her latest EP The Questioning Type which deals with themes of grief and change.
Ballymore Eustace singer- songwriter Megan O’Neill released her latest EP The Questioning Type recently.
A personal record, it deals with themes of grief and change.
Megan O’Neill has opened for the legendary Sir Tom Jones and performed at private Oscars’ parties in LA alongside Gavin James (on invite from JJ Abrams).
The Kildare Americana singer-songwriter has also had her music featured on hit shows like Nashville and Firefly Lane.
The single Time in a Bottle charted #1 on the Irish singer/songwriter charts, #2 on the Irish charts across all genres and seen her perform on the Late Late.
In 2018, while she was living in London, Megan released her debut album Ghost of You which hit #1 on the iTunes singer/songwriter charts in the UK and Ireland.
In 2021 she released the follow-up, Getting Comfortable with Uncertainty.
Megan took time to chat to the Irish World about the new music.
You have been busy..
“Yeah, I’ve just put out the EP so very happy to have that out in the world.
“It’s been a long time getting it to this point, as it always is.
“You think, ‘I’ve written these songs, I just have to record them and get them out’ and then the process of studio time and getting different musicians and mixing and mastering and artwork and all that takes a long time, so very happy to have the songs out.
“I just did a show a few weeks ago but in terms of gigs, I’m not doing too much at the moment because I’m pregnant again so I am not going to be doing that much in terms of live this year, most of what I’ll be doing will be studio work.”
Have you always been able to stay creative and making music through becoming a motherhood and everything else?
“Yes and no.
“There’s always ideas churning and I’m always keen to be working on new songs.
“It’s much harder to find the time with having a young toddler at home and I know it will be even harder again when there’s two so that side of things is challenging, just trying to juggle everything.
“But there’s always songs in the process, it’s just finding the time to maybe fine tune them enough that they feel finished.”
It feels like it’s been a while since you put out music..
“I put out a song at the end of last year and then before then, I put out three singles in 2024 so it’s been trickling along but I just haven’t had the capacity to do an album which I would love to do but I suppose if you add them all together, over the last three years, it’s been an album’s worth but it’s very hard to wrap your head around recording a full album in any one period of time.
“An album’s such a huge undertaking and I’d love to be doing it but at the moment, I just don’t have that kind of capacity but it feels great to be putting out this stuff.
“I’m really proud of it.”
What made you call the EP The Questioning Type, was it a time of intense questioning for you?
“It was when I wrote the songs.
“I think the songs are very much about going through this period of immense change in your life.
“A lot of questions come up when you’re going through big changes: If you’re becoming a parent, if you’re losing a parent, if you’re ending a relationship, if you’re starting a new one, if you’re leaving a job.
“All these big changes in life bring about a lot of questions like, what’s it all about? What do we value? What do I want to do with my time?
“I think there’s so many questions.
“I had so many questions when I was writing these songs, particularly The Questioning Type which is one of the songs on the EP and it just felt like an appropriate title for all three of them.”
Grief is a big theme in the record, isn’t it?
“Yeah and that’s what I was referring to in terms of change.
“It was a big change in my life, losing a parent, and a real time of grief as it is for anybody that loses anybody close to them.
“These songs were written during that period of time, trying to encapsulate that emotion and trying to put that into words which I found really hard to do.”
She Is A Bird is a song that you were inspired to write during some time in Cork, isn’t that write?
“I was near Coolmain (Beach) and I was there with my now husband.
“We were there for about a month and we brought down all of our instruments and essentially transported the studio to this house for a month.
“We just had creative time and lots of time to read.
“We just had a really nice time down there and I wrote that song there.
“It’s very much about feeling caged in with whatever experience you’re going through in life, feeling caged in by the experience.
“Even though you have the capacity to change it, it feels like you don’t so that was where the inspiration for She is a Bird came from.”
Another song You Don’t Feel Like Home was inspired by a few return trips to London. Although you used to live in London, you found it unfamiliar..
“Yeah, London changed for me a lot: Its own personal meaning to me but also, it’s a big city so it’s always evolving and it’s always changing.
“I moved home from London in 2019 and then I was back a lot for different gigs and work and stuff like that but then COVID hit so I wasn’t there for about two years or maybe a year and a half or something.
“But I went back 2022 and I just thought, ‘What the f**k?’
“Everything felt different.
“A lot of my friends have moved away.
“Places I liked to go had closed down.
“The streets looked different.
“It’s a city. It changes and the people there change and it felt really jarring to me and really unfamiliar to me but it was also, and the song kind of reflects on that, it was also because I was different.
“So yes, London had changed in some physical ways but I was really different going back.
“I had gotten used to the quiet of the countryside in Ireland and I’d gotten used to space and I found the chaos of London jarring in a way that I had never found before.
“I probably found that when I first moved there but not since.
“So yes, London was a bit different but the main difference was me.”
You played the London Irish Centre last year, yourself, Emma Langford and Gráinne Hunt with your Songwriters in the Round show, how did you enjoy that?
“Amazing.
“We had such a good time and that was probably one of our favourite shows on the whole tour.
“It was just great buzz, loads of laughs, really good audience. Just really, really fun.
“I think the three of us on stage have very good chemistry and there’s a lot of jokes and banter and craic.
“One of the comments from that show was, ‘They all could have sang no songs and it still would have been brilliant’.
“I think that’s just because we chatted so much and we were just all in really good form.
“It was very fun.
“I love that venue.”
How did you enjoy doing a show like that where you shared the burden with two other songwriters? Is it more fun for that?
“Yeah, you do share a lot of the burden which was great.
“We’re three solo artists so we’re all used to touring on our own, doing all of the heavy lifting on your own.
“It was really nice to share that and really nice to kind of have comrades with you on the road so that part was lovely.
“The girls are great.
“They’re fantastic songwriters.
“They’re wonderful musicians.
“They’re really nice people and we all gelled really well.
“We all got along really well.
“We all just had a lot of fun and so hopefully there’s more of that in the future.”
Your 2025 single Four Miles Deep was a collaboration between yourself and Mark Caplice. You and Mark have successfully combined in the past. What was it like to be working together again?
“Amazing.
“Mark and I are really, really good friends and we work together on loads of different projects, we just rarely release anything.
“But I love working with Mark.
“He’s one of my best friends.
“He’s just immensely talented and great fun to work with.
“How Four Miles Deep started as a song was I was walking on the beach and I sent Mark five voice notes in a row like, ‘I have this idea for a song. Here’s what I’m thinking. I would like it to sound like this. Here are some lyrical ideas’.
“And I just went off on a stream of consciousness.
“That was how it began.
“And we went back and forth.
“This was probably five years ago.
“We were both losing a parent at the time so we understood each other and we understood the journey that we were both on.
“That’s why it was fantastic to be able to collaborate with Mark on something.
“Grief is one of those things that if you’re in the thick of it, you’re able to understand it and communicate about it.
“And if you’ve been through it, if you’ve experienced it.
“But if you haven’t, it’s very hard to understand.
“Like anything in life if you haven’t been through it, it’s very hard to understand so it was great to be able to write with somebody who understood the experience and be able to put that into a song.
“I love working with him.”
I understand more music that you have to come will be concerned with motherhood…
“Yeah, definitely.
“I’m a very autobiographical songwriter so I always write from my own experience.
“My experience in the last two to three years has been motherhood and becoming a parent and the shift in identity when you become a parent is enormous in a way that I never expected and never could have predicted even though people told me.
“But, same as grief, that’s another thing you don’t understand until you’re going through it.
“Now I’m about to go through it again so there’s a lot of stuff I want to write about in that experience and the shift in identity and change to your entire life, your environment, your home, your relationship, your career, your sleep schedule, everything and I want to try to put that into music.”
You played the 3 Arena recently with Irish Women in Harmony…
“It was the Hot Press 50th birthday gig so it was absolutely amazing with a load of great bands involved: The Cranberries, The Frames, Dermot Kennedy, Imelda May, Picture This, Boomtown Rats.
“There was so many bands.
“It was amazing.
“It was an amazing experience and a real sense of community.
“Everybody backstage was just getting on great and it was a real event for the Irish music community.
“Everyone was in top form celebrating each other so that was really nice.
“Playing the 3 Arena was pretty great.”
And what about Irish women in harmony? You’ve been doing stuff with them for what years now?
How do you enjoy doing stuff with that collective, Irish Women in Harmony?
“I haven’t done too much with Irish Women in Harmony but the stuff that I have done has been really enjoyable.
“Everyone’s very supportive of one another and supportive of one another’s careers and music.
“Again it’s that camaraderie and community that I think is so important in the creative arts and so necessary.
“I think if you’re a solo artist, and a lot of people in Irish Women in Harmony are, it can be a lot of weight on your own shoulders so it’s nice to have those projects where you come together and collaborate.”
Did you always know it was music for you?
“I always very much gravitated towards music and being on stage and performing and storytelling, poetry, just love the use of the English language, always very much gravitated towards it.
“It never really felt like very much of a decision for me and more so just a natural progression.”
And I know in London you juggled temp work with your music career. Were there hard times in that period?
“Yeah, but I think there are with any career.
“I think if you work in the arts, there’s a lot of financial instability which is really challenging when you live somewhere expensive.
“We now live in a world that everywhere is expensive so we all feel it now but I really felt that London was just so expensive trying to juggle having enough money to put together a record, to record music was really challenging when you were having to pay rent and your tube pass every week.
“It was a lot to juggle.
“I just ended up in a lot of debt really which I think is quite common too but I also wouldn’t change that for anything, I think those years were really formative for me.
“I learned a lot about myself and about the industry and I worked with a lot of great people so I wouldn’t change that either.
“I think everywhere you live comes with its own challenges.”
I bet you wouldn’t look back now and are happy to be raising kids at home in Kildare..
“I love where I live.
“I live in the same town I grew up in and I just adore it so much.
“I’m so grateful to be here.
“I’m filled with gratitude to be living here and I love that my kids are going to have a similar childhood experience to what I had because I loved my childhood.
“I’m very lucky that I had a really great childhood, a really great family and I’m just very happy to be home.
“That transition was difficult too, moving from London home was a challenging transition but it was really worth it.”
You have shared the stage with big names and had your music featured in massive shows like Firefly Lane. Do you have a particular highlight of your career to date?
“The songs and TV placements are always really exciting when they happen.
“My favourite part of it is always the creative process so the songwriting, the studio time, hearing your story or your music come to life- That’s always my favourite part of the whole career.
“There have been amazing shows and amazing collaborative experiences and absolutely they’re highlights.
“The 3 Arena a few weeks ago was a highlight.
“The Tom Jones gigs were major highlights.
“But the creative process is what keeps me in.
“That’s my dangling carrot.
“What keeps me coming back all of the time is just the need to write songs.”
Do you find it therapeutic?
“It can be.
“It’s helping you to unravel or untangle your thoughts.
“Sometimes they’re unconscious, sometimes they’re thoughts that you wouldn’t otherwise access unless it was because of music.
“I think it can be really therapeutic.”
Has the EP been cathartic for you?
“Yes and no.
“I don’t mean to sound like it hasn’t been but I just think grief is such a huge, huge, huge life event.
“Losing somebody is so enormous and it has been so enormous for me and so yes, the songs have helped in a small way but I don’t think any one thing can help you with grief.
“I think it’s time and it’s community and it’s family and it’s people around you and it’s therapy.
“It’s all of these things so the songs have definitely contributed to that in a helpful way, absolutely but I don’t think them in themselves could be the main therapeutic kind of process.”
The Questioning Type is out now.
For more information, click here.
