Song Stories: CMAT: EURO-COUNTRY

2025 has been quite the year for Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, better known as CMAT. She performed to one of the biggest crowds at Glastonbury in the summer. A set on the Friday that drew thousands to watch her and her ensemble, blasting through some of her most loved songs including 'Have Fun!', the pop-tastic ‘Take A Sexy Picture Of Me’, complete with everyone having a go at that viral ‘woke Macarena’ dance and generate one of the biggest sing alongs of the weekend with 'Running/Planning'. 

One song that didn’t make CMAT’s Glastonbury set, however, was the opening and title track of her latest album, ‘EURO-COUNTRY’. Released just weeks after the biggest show of her career, the track explores the economic downturn that gripped Ireland following the 2008 financial crash.

The song opens with an Irish-language introduction and unfolds as a reflection on post–Celtic Tiger Ireland. CMAT revisits the fallout of the crash from the perspective of her younger self, a child growing up in a small town, feeling detached from her cultural identity. That sense of dislocation mirrors Ireland’s own struggle to reconcile its past with a shiny, consumerist, globalised future as a so-called “Euro Country.” Throughout the song, she namechecks figures spanning Irish mythology and pop culture: the legendary warrior Cú Chulainn, English television personality Kerry Katona, and Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach whose legacy remains fiercely debated. CMAT has been openly critical of Ahern in the past, once vowing that it was her “personal fucking mission to make sure that he doesn’t win.”

This is one of the darkest pieces CMAT has ever written. She references suicide (“I was 12 when the das started killing themselves all around me”) alongside snapshots of childhood alienation (“All the mooching ’round shops, and the lack of identity”). Yet these heavy themes are delivered with her distinctive yodel-tinged vocals and a wash of Lana Del Rey–esque melancholia. For all its gloom, the song is also one of her catchiest; the chorus lingers long after it ends. The juxtaposition of these images is what sets the song apart; there's humour and brutal honesty. The funny nature of her songwriting sits alongside some home truths

Thompson’s anger and heartbreak cut through layers of electric guitar and organ, practically shouting at “all the big boys / all the Berties” who, in her view, helped warp the Ireland she once recognised. What remains is a romanticised national image propped up by pop-cultural exports—from Sally Rooney adaptations to the international success of Irish actors. Despite the grit of its subject matter, the song still soars emotionally, anchored by the simple yet striking hook: “My Euro-Euro-Euro Country (the mam and the dad) / My Euro-Euro-Euro Country (the present is past).”

When 30 years ago, Ireland’s musical scene was one brimming with politics and protest, here we see that mantle being picked up again, reflecting society after it came out the other side.

CMAT isn’t alone in re-examining Ireland through music. Fontaines D.C. delved into the version of the country they left behind on ‘Skinty Fia’, while Kneecap chronicle life north of the border through raps and vocals in their native Gaelic.

The song’s first BBC Radio 1 broadcast sparked controversy when its opening 45 seconds of the Irish-language spoken word section were cut. Responding to criticism, the BBC denied intentionally censoring the introduction, stating that they had aired the version provided by CMAT’s label, AWAL. CMAT later clarified on Instagram that the edit had not been her decision, adding that the BBC had since contacted her to confirm they would play the full version. “I don’t know who edited it out – that was crazy of them,” she wrote.

In an interview discussing the financial crash and its influence on the song, CMAT stated, “I was about 12 and it all happened around me, it didn’t really happen to my family directly. My dad had a job in computers. We didn’t really have any money; we weren’t affluent, but we were fine. Everybody else on the estate we lived in worked in construction or in shops, and they all lost their jobs. Everybody became unemployed. Then, in the village I grew up in, there was a year or 18 months where loads of the people I went to school with, their dads started killing themselves because they’d lost everything in the crash.”

Writing for Far Out magazine, Lauren Hunter declared "Euro-Country" “the most important political song of our times” and stated that “unlike other songs with political forces steering the ship, the focus here is not about the high and mighty overlords leading the charge, but all the real people left behind to grapple with their own identities in the aftermath.”

It's an exceptional piece of music and one of my songs of the year. 

Thank you for reading 

Jack