Daniel O'Donnell

You can measure Daniel O’Donnell’s incredible 40-year career through his impressive sales feats if you like: here’s a singer who’s achieved 12 gold-selling albums and another seven which have gone silver. Daniel has scored 16 Top 10 albums and 11 Top 30 singles, including the gorgeous Top 10 hit Give A Little Love. 

Go to a concert and witness the rapturous response that shows the admiration Daniel O’Donnell engenders in people, a closeness to his audience legendary among fellow performers, evidence of how Daniel O’Donnell has been a true phenomenon ever since his debut album The Boy From Donegal was released in 1984.

Although he’s been a star for so long, fame wasn’t Daniel’s intention when he quit a career in banking to focus on music in his early twenties. “All I wanted was to make a living from music. If I could survive as a musician, that would be good enough for me”.

The turning point arrived with his second album Two Sides Of Daniel O’Donnell in 1985.  “I started to do well in 1986. That’s when I thought: ‘This is me now, I can do this.’ and I’ve never contemplated anything else since”.

Growing up in the Donegal fishing village of Kincasslagh helped foster the community spirit key to Daniel’s closeness with his audience. “What I do now is an extension of the community feeling I had growing up,” he reflects.

“After a show, there are only so many people who want to wait to meet you. Some people only want to meet you once. The others – when I go onstage, I see lots of people I recognise, who I’d never have met if I didn’t meet people after a show. If you see people regularly, you’re going to get to know them.”

Daniel’s passion for diverse music has been there since he was a boy. He was equally into country singers such as Loretta Lynn, traditional Irish vocalist Dolores Keane, and easy listening stars such as Andy Williams.

So when you go to a Daniel concert, be prepared for someone equally at home with country, folk, inspirational, Irish music, and rock & roll.

Perhaps the biggest testament, at least in statistics, to how Daniel O’Donnell has stayed at the top of his game for so long is that he’s the only artist to have placed a different album in the chart every year since the gold-selling From The Heart launched his career in the UK in 1988.  Daniel’s natural instinct for what works for him, and his fans, is a large reason why he has remained so prolific and maintained his record-breaking number of albums since he first charted. He reasons: “There’s no end to the songs I want to sing. That’s why I’ve been able to record so much music.”

If you’re already familiar with Daniel’s music, his new compilation Through The Years is a chance to reacquaint yourself with the grace and charm of hits including Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love, Footsteps and Crush On You. With a Release date of October 11th – Through The Years is the perfect go-to album for Daniel fans both new and old, featuring 42 tracks across his 40-year career, plus a bonus live CD of his concert recorded at The Millenium Forum in Derry in 2023.

If the boy from Donegal couldn’t have seen that coming when he started 40 years ago, he’s having far too much fun to stop now.