After what is quite possibly their biggest summer to date, playing huge shows in London, Manchester, Newcastle and across Europe. It seemed like the perfect time to pick my Top 10 Fontaines D.C songs. So here goes.
The title track from the band's second album, an album that in hindsight often gets overlooked because of what it followed and what followed it. There are still some brilliant songs on that record, and in my opinion, this is the best.
Arriving just over a year after the band's debut 'Dogrel', 'A Hero's Death' had big boots to follow, and it's the sound of a band getting to grips with their new normal. It's a band getting to grips with their rapidly changing worlds.
The song keeps the post-punk feel that fans grew to love from 'Dogrel' and showcases just how good a lyric writer Grian Chatten is. Five years on, these are still some of the finest words he has ever penned. All wrapped around a straight-up pop vocal. “Don’t get stuck in the past / Say your favourite things at mass.” Among doo-wop backing vocals straight from the Brian Wilson songbook, he tells himself: “Tell your mother that you love her, and go out of your way for others.”
The self-interrogation hits its peak when Chatten notes that “happiness ain’t really all about luck” and bellows: “When you speak, speak sincere / And believe me, friend, everyone will hear.” In burning the candle at both ends, he warns, “we’re all in the running for a hero’s death”.
One of the band's best, and still one of my favourites. A band who are not afraid to embrace pop music but who do it their own way.
Released as part of a deluxe edition of 'Romance', the most recent Fontaines D.C. album, 'Before You I Just Forget' is a dreamy effort that see's the band embrace new sounds and sonic ideas similar to what they did on 'Starburster' the lead single from 'Romance'.
Speaking on the song, Conor Curley said “‘Before You I Just Forget’ is a song that started with a vision of this really blown out sound, something that heaved and shifted with new details becoming apparent every time you would listen.
“Like never being able to step in the same river twice, the song morphs and changes, finishing with an incredible string part by Grian."
It's a sound that Fontaines have used sparsley but both efforts so far, have been standout tracks. This one has been on heavy rotation on my playlists for the last few months. As has track number 8.
Released as a stand alone single, at the begining of 2025, 'It's Amazing To Be Young' is a beautiful nostagalic look at youth. The song has echoes to another song from 'Romance', 'Favourite' which may or not be on this list. It's a real euphoric affair about the innoncence of being young over a kaleidoscopic indie riff.
When talking about the song bassist Conor ‘Deego’ Deegan III explained how the song was inspired by being “in the presence of a newborn child” – the child of guitarist Carlos O’Connell.
“I’m glad it got to see the light of day, because it a special song to us. More so for the way it was written than the song itself, in a weird way. It started life in the presence of Carlos’ newborn and it’s just a message for her, you know.”
He continued: “It was really heartwarming. Sometimes as people we can be a bit cynical. The world around us can make you that way if you’re paying attention it. Sometimes optimism feels like a necessary delusion, but with the birth of a new child we were introduced to a really pure and deep beauty and hope that can’t be debated away by anyone jaded or even by ourselves.”
I really like this song, and it's definitley a contender for my song of the year this year. It's a sound that I think really suits Fontaines D.C. and a sound I hope they explore more.
As opening statements go, this one is up there. "Dublin in the rain is mine!" Is quite the way to open your debut album. A snarling guitar and bell driven track with the Fontaines frontman barking that he's "gonna be big." with the determination of a young Gallagher, it's hard not to be gripped and taken on this journey. The journey so far has been a very good one.
It's not all bark and no bite though, in a minute and forty five seconds, Fontaines D.C. present their manifesto and you are either with them or you're against them. This song opens one of the very best debut records of the 2010's and sets up ten more exceptional songs. It had to make the list.
Another one from 'Dogrel' arriving less than five minutes after 'Big', 'Too Real' is where Fontaines D.C. show you what they can really do. Grabbing your attention through all consuming noise, the drums pulsate and the guitars wail and screech, being commanded by the vocals. No the way around. Chatten paints a picture with his words and the instrumentation assists him in this.
Despite the noise, there is a senstivity to the words, a romance to the brutality. The ragged delivery, the guitar lines that screech and the miltary like drums, help to soundtrack one of the bands most underrated songs. I really love 'Too Real' on an album full of classics, from the aformentioned opener, to the Joy Division-like atmospherics of ‘The Lotts’ and the drunken poetic quality of ‘Dublin City Sky’, a song where the band connect with fellow countrymen The Pogues, it's a song that often gets overlooked.
Another 'Romance' track, this time. 'Desire' is Fontaines at their pop best, this chorus will and has provoked mass sing alongs but it takes everything from the previous three records, the atmosphere of 'Skinty Fia', the post punk drums of 'A Hero's Death' and the beautiful poetry of 'Dogrel' to create something spectacular. There is no craven lunge for mass acceptance, 'Fontaines D.C.' are making music on their terms.
Chatten's songwriting on 'Desire' and thw whole of 'Romance' perfectly charts the devastating duality of life, on 'Desire' he sings some truly brutal lines.
"I see them driving into nothing, where the nothing is sure
They drown their wishes in the fountain like their fathers before"
It's dark and forboading and hits like a gale force. This is songwriting of the highest order.
'Dogrel' is a punk album, it's a collection of 10 songs that offer a storytellers narrative, and a snarling new vision of youthful disillusionment. It starts with a bold declaration and ends with an Irish drinking song, more in line with The Pogues than Joy Divisiom or the Sex Pistols. A song that highlights the bands escapist sentiment, but also paints a picture of their home city.
After 9 songs where you feel every blow, 'Dublin City Sky' feels like a comedown, with the singer plying his rigid voice around a sensitive, romantic serenade and though it doesn’t yet feel like a natural fit, the poignancy is undeniable. Lyrically the song is nothing short of a masterpiece.
"As drunk as love is lethal, I spun a lady 'round
And I kissed her 'neath the waking of a Dublin City sky"
The portryal of their home city is so raw and vivid, the sound of last orders, the last pints of Guiness being poured as friends and lovers are booted out onto the street.
"And in the foggy dew, I saw you throwing shapes around
It was underneath the waking of a Dublin City sky
And it all makes sour
To watch my lover wrap her arms around the flag of power
Hurry now you will
To know you is to love you and I love you even still
Ah, but we'll never truly be
We trip along disaster in the whirlwind of the free
Alltogether now."
The perfect end to a perfect album.
Part glowing love song, part troubled revalation about the world we live in. All agaianst a string filled hallunciatory haze. It's an expression of hopelnesses within the modern world, whch takes influence from the likes of Lana Del Rey. Full of melancholy, but also a sense of hope. You cannot help but feel uplifted in the choruses. This troubled outlook on the world that the band live in has been present since the debut record.
But where those thoughts were previously surrounded by a wall of noise, the atmospheric string filled haze that emcopasses the new sound of the band makes for an interesting listen. This track is about helplessness, the lack of enthusiasm and empathy, and our souls becoming numb due to the outside world’s pressures, as Chatten confesses “I don’t feel anything, in the modern world, and I don’t feel bad.”
These new sound creates a push pull dynamic between contrasting elements. Bursts of lush orchestration are scuffed up by Chatten’s raw, flinty voice, which is so distinctive, it's the definitve sound of Fontaines D.C. This Fontaines D.C's finest hour.
Some class 'Skinty Fia' as Fontaine's finest record, I'm not in the camp. I prefer both 'Romance' and 'Dogrel'. However, that albums second single is one of their best and most important songs. It's heartbreaking, breathaking and sees the band put themselves on a trial. Discetting their own worries and anxieties before addressing the young people of their native Ireland. A genearation confused, and full of rage.
he five-minute centrepiece opens with a Stone Roses-style bass rumble that quickens and intensifies as he begins to pinpoint the failings of the unelected coalition of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that has formed the current Irish government since 2020, as well as nodding to Ireland’s growing housing issues and high rates of youth suicide. “Flowers read like broadsheets / Every young man wants to die”, he repeats over thundering drums.
By honouring his generation’s rage, the track allows Chatten to shout back at his politically dysfunctional home, but also contemplate the pain of moving away from it. Singing about his love and pride of being an Irishman, alongside a feeling of guilt having achieved success to then leave and move across the Atlantic to England, a country that has been a cause of many of the issues felt in his home country, Lyrically this is Chatten's finest work, and it's not even close. The lyrics of this song are spectacular. Bold, brave, beautiful and at times extremely brutal.
"This island's run by sharks with children's bones stuck in their jaws”
A look at the darker side of Ireland, pointing directly to Ireland’s devastating church scandals—such as the discovery of mass graves at Mother and Baby Homes, where unmarried mothers and their children were hidden, mistreated, and in many cases left to die.
Is their mommy Fine Gael and is their daddy Fianna Fáil?”
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have dominated Irish politics since the 1930s. Though supposedly on opposite sides, many critics see them as two sides of the same coin: centrist, conservative, and complicit in maintaining inequality. By calling them “mommy” and “daddy,” Fontaines D.C. reduces them to parental figures who failed to nurture but instead passed down dysfunction.
"And they say they love the land but they don’t feel it go to waste. Hold a mirror to the youth and they will only see their face.”
Ireland’s housing crisis is among the most severe in Europe, pushing not just artists like Chatten and his bandmates abroad, but an entire generation of young people in search of stability. Between 2008 and 2014, social housing construction collapsed by 88%, setting off a chain reaction that has made buying a first home nearly impossible—the average age of a first-time buyer in 2024 now sits at 43. In the meantime, a whole generation is being squeezed under the weight of predatory rents.
The iconic line “Selling genocide and half-cut pride” is an acute reference to a scandal that rocked the country. An Irish historian revealed a nearly century-long cover-up of 796 children who were buried in an unmarked grave in Tuam between 1925 and 1961, at a home for single mothers and babies, who became pregnant out of wedlock and were placed in Catholic institutions until the 1980s. Among the Irish population, the event became a stain on their morals, raising questions over the entire bedrock of the country’s values. It’s a shocking and disturbing event that helps contextualise Chatten’s conflict with a country he painfully adores.
This song is nothing short of a masterpiece, I remeber hearing it for the first time and being blown away. It's unbelieveable it's not my favourite though.
‘Favourite’ is a song that sees Fontaines D.C. looking both backwards and forwards at once. The band themselves describe it as having “this never-ending sound to it, a continuous cycle from euphoria to sadness, two worlds spinning forever,” and that sentiment is mirrored in the music. The track is built around a chiming guitar riff reminiscent of The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’ a bright, nostalgic figure that carries an undercurrent of melancholy. It feels like one of the band’s most traditional songs, yet the atmosphere it creates is unusually radiant, a sound tailormade for the summer months.
Lyrically, ‘Favourite’ is among the band’s strongest work to date. While their last record, ‘Skinty Fia’, marked a leap forward in poetic ambition, particularly on tracks like ‘I Love You’ this new song feels even more distilled and direct in its emotional clarity. Lines such as “Each new day I get another year older” and “Every time you blink you feel a change” capture the dizzying speed of time and the disorientation that comes with constant evolution. Elsewhere, Fontaines nod to political and cultural memory: the mistreatment of the working class in Thatcher’s Britain, the alienation of gentrification, and the bittersweet ache of homesickness felt when returning to a changed Ireland after years of touring. The lyric “Cities on return are often strange” encapsulates that sense of dislocation with understated power.
What makes ‘Favourite’ stand out is the way it holds all of these threads together the personal and political, the nostalgic and the immediate—without ever feeling weighed down. It’s a song about memory and belonging, but also about moving forward, finding beauty in impermanence, and holding onto the things that truly matter.