Carlow native, Tadhg Griffin, premieres a galactic visual art piece in the form of an extended music video for his song ‘Space Love’.

The six-minute fantasia offers viewers bright lights, out-of-this-world outfits, as it follows the singer on a journey which is sure to take people to another galaxy.

So what was the inspiration behind the song? Tadhg explained, ” I wrote the song back in Christmas of 2019, so it’s from a different world, but I think I just got lucky and unlucky that the song was upbeat and energetic and as a result perfect for the last year of dullness. The song was always meant to be bigger than big. An expression of complete maximalism. I just wanted to show what I’m capable of when given an opportunity to push myself.”

‘Space Love’ went through many different versions, as Tadhg Griffin told GCN: “Originally the song wasn’t meant to repeat ever and it was going to be an experiment as regards structure. And while it did eventually change to become more repetitive and marketable, I still wanted every section that repeated to be different. So all the verses and the chorus that repeat are all in different keys. It’s constantly ascending and gaining speed until the very last note.”

“The music video, like the song, is really an expression again of everything I can do smashed into six minutes. Usually I’d try to be more humble than this, but modesty is the most boring of virtues, anyway, live performance is where I really shine. I wanted people to feel the fire that I have when I perform and the drive I have to create. I take a lot of inspiration from drag queens and I always loved the grandeur of their costumes. But mainly I love that they do it all themselves and that they literally build a character from the ground up. And it’s a fearsome amount of work to do that.

“I feel like I’m quite similar, I write, arrange and produce my music. I do my own makeup, with the help of a good friend, Brendan Byrne I learned how to sew and in the music video you can see my first two costumes. I don’t have a manager so I organise everything. I directed, produced and edited the music video and its trailers.”

Debuting his single at BIMM’s Live and Lyrical event  and impressing the college executives gave Tadhg the opportunity to record his single in the on-campus studio. Writing, arranging, producing, and composing ‘Space Love’ was a labor of love for him, but he shares, “Arranging the song for live performances wasn’t too hard, you have a set amount of instruments and my band is top-class, Dara Abdurahman on bass, Josh Hackett and PJ O’Neill on guitar, and Korey Thomas on drums. I just show them a chord chart and they know what to do.”

Tadhg also performed to a worldwide audience at Global Pride 2020 and he was featured as part of Ireland’s own digital pride. He also featured on the cover of The Out Mag amid Carlow Pride’s cancellation due to the pandemic.

The video features a whole host of Carlow natives as the band, dancers, and everyone involved in the music video are all natives of the county. “It really was built from the ground up, brick by brick, with help from the most talented and generous people. Éamonn McMahon filmed the main scenes and he really captured the speed of energy of the song.

“My dancers, Lauren Oman, Ciara Hogan, Dionne McCarthy, Lauren Whelan, Emma Townsend, Rachel Haughney, and Ruairí Curran. That was a full morning of running up and down a hill and they danced like it was the last dance they’d ever dance. My brother Cormac filmed all the scenes on the beach and the cliff-side, THE CLIFF SIDE. We were literally on a cliff!

“I’d take up the whole article if I named everyone so I’ll just say, it took a lot of great people to do this. And I’m grateful for each and everyone of them.”

What’s next for Tadhg is in the stars but he told GCN, “To be honest I’m going back to the drawing board a bit. I wasn’t happy with where my music was going pre-covid and I feel like now that the world is slowly coming back to normal I’m more motivated than ever to start a new chapter. I’m just going to write loads of music and see what happens.

“I found it really difficult to write during lockdown. I used gigs as motivation to write but as a result everything I wrote was lacking something. Like it was being made because it had too, not because I wanted to. But I WANT to make new music now. And I’m very excited to see what happens next.”

You can check out the full video for Tadhg Griffin’s Space Love below. You can also stream the debut single here.