With just a week to go until Ireland votes on Marriage Equality, we present our top ten songs from Irish performers singing out for a great big Yes!

1. People Get Ready
Ciara Sidine and The Equality Chorus

Recorded with the help of Bressie, among a coterie of Ireland’s top session musicians, Ciara Sidine’s reimagining of Curtis Mayfield’s civil rights anthem is a rousing call to action, with goosebump moments.
According to Sidine, who’s 2011 album Shadow Road Shining was critically acclaimed: “We are urging people to ‘get on board’ and vote Yes on 22 May. As the song says: ‘Equality is what we’re movin’ towards’.”

2. The Nualas
Yes2Love

Comedy trio The Nualas have long had a gay following, and they give back the love with plenty of laughs in this gay rights anthem like no other.
The amazing thing about recording the song and making the video was the good will of absolutely everybody involved towards the cause. Okay, the song isn’t going to have the likes of Breda O’Brien going, “OMG! I see the light!’ It could never be that. We just wanted to make something happy – a joyous celebration of the real issue at the heart of this referendum: Love.

3. Maria Doyle Kennedy
Pride (Straight Up For Equality)

“Nobody gets to say, who we love or who we lay down beside, or take for your lover, your husband, your life or your bride,” Maria sings in this short but beautiful ode to love and pride.

“I think it’s pretty clear where I stand (I will be voting Yes). I cannot understand why anyone would have a problem with people who want to marry being able to do that,” Maria says on her blog.

4. Queeva
Love is What Changes Us

This ballad from Wiclow woman, Caoimhe Duane, morphs into a big, brassy pop anthem as it progresses, and it gets right to the heart of what the marriage equality campaign is all about.
“I was inspired to write this song because I wanted to express my view through music – that love is not discriminatory, prejudiced or biased – no matter what gender,” Queeva told The Outmost. “We are all in this together!”

5. Jack O’Rourke
Silence

It’s impossible not to be moved by this emotional song about growing up gay from Cork man, Jack O’Rourke, who sings about his own struggle to reach self-acceptance.
“I believe my song could resonate with so many people – gay, straight, whatever and particularly people on the fence about how to vote,” he says. “I think people will understand that me getting married, or many like me, won’t cause the sky to fall in.”

6. More Than God
Buffalo Woman

Taken from the 2009 Broken Talkers song cycle, Silver Stars, which premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival and told real-life stories of Irish gay men in search of happiness and fulfilment in a country that was once challenged by their very existence, this is a deeply moving song taken from the words of a Catholic mother to her gay son, upon finding him homeless on the streets of Paris.

“We have moved from a time when homosexuality was against God and was illegal, to a time when gay people are finally saying we want it all,” says one half of the Buffalo Woman duo, Neil Watkins. “The benefits of getting it all can mean only one thing for gay people… much happier women and men.”

7. We Love The Same (A Song For Equality)
Choral Con Fusion

Cork’s LGBT choir launched their anthem for equality with a social networking campaign, and all proceeds from the single on iTunes go to the marriage equality campaign. There’s still time to buy it!
“I wanted the song to be a message of equality but not a political statement,” says its author, Karl Fradgely. “This referendum is about equality within the law and the lyrics reflect the universality of love as an emotion and as an experience that all of us feel, no matter who we fall in or out of love with. Love is equal and should be treated as such.”

8. Just Say Yes
Snow Patrol

Northern Irish outfit, Snow Patrol, lent this hit from their 2012 album Fallen Empires to the Yes Equality campaign.

9. SYDE
I’m Not Better Off Without You

Students at BIMM, Ele Breslin, Hugh O’Neill and Stephen Ward wrote this stunning song in support of the Yes campaign. Out and proud Ele hopes that the sentiment behind the song helps anyone who is experiencing difficulties and also instil a sense of hope for the ‘Yes’ campaign.
“On the most basic level, this song is about love and personal acceptance and if it helps even one person, I would be happy,” she says.

10. Craic Whores
Making History

Comedy duo, Riona O’Connor and Sharon Sexton, currently doing the rounds in London, weigh in with a pretty bang-on-the-money tune, traditional-style, putting a Yes vote in the context of Ireland’s recent, eh, dodgy history.