The 21 best Irish songs for St. Patrick’s Day

All right, look: Is it offensive to suggest a rap song by a group of Irish-American knuckleheads that has nothing to do with Ireland or its history and everything to do with getting into drunken bar fights? Perhaps. But if you’ve ever celebrated St. Paddy’s Day in the states, you know that no other cultural product has captured the swaggering, staggering, boot-and-rally energy of the holiday better. And anyway, the track’s signature, incessant squealing noise sure sounds like a bagpipe, doesn’t it? 

The first time much of the world outside Ireland heard traditional Celtic music came via Paddy Moloney’s long-running ensemble, which somehow became an international sensation in the 1970s and ‘80s playing instrumental Irish folk tunes utterly divorced from contemporary pop trends. Any selection from their discography will transport listeners back to the Old Country, but this pipes-and-bodhran toe-tapper - recorded in 1978, though it might as well be 1758 - might inspire you to leap up on the bar and break into some step-dancing. Moloney died in 2021 at age 83, so make sure to throw back a shot of Knappogue in his honor.

In 2024, Kneecap told The Face, “Our music is provocative, but it’s a mirror to society,” and their 2017 single ‘C.E.A.R.T.A’ is the perfect example of that. Inspired by rapper Móglaí Bap spray-painting the letters (meaning rights) on a wall as a teen and getting arrested, the duo of Bap and Mo Chara rap, “C.E.A.R.T.A / Is cuma liom sa foc faoi aon gharda / Dúidín lasta, tá mise ró-ghasta,” declaring they simply don’t care for the police. Kneecap predominantly raps in their native tongue, making their music a statement against British interference in Belfast, and they've even called for the Irish language to have equal status to English. All of this makes the song a fascinating glimpse into Ireland’s ongoing political tension.

Lankum go hard. The Dublin-based band might have been pigeonholed into the ‘folk’ bracket, but their heavy, causeway-shaking sound would make most trad types run for the hills. A doomy and spacious interpretation of the classic Irish waltz, ‘Go Dig My Grave’ is an eight-minute long epic, heavy with sorrow and a clanging, hypnotic masterpiece. The polar opposite of a house party heater, and all the better for it.

Though the Pogues and the Dubliners collaborated on a memorable rendition of this tall tale (which topped the Irish charts in 1987), the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem put a killer rendition of the tune to wax some 20 years earlier. The details of the story might be a bit unbelievable but who could doubt 'em?

If you've ever attended a concert with Bono & Co., you'll know this set staple is ‘not a rebel song’ (or so the arena-rock idol proclaims every time he performs it live). Sure, the militaristic snare beat calls to mind an army drumline and the lyrics chronicle the titular Irish tragedy's bloodshed—the mass civilian killing from the Troubles known as Bloody Sunday—but the tune's not a rally cry for armed resistance. Rather, the band adamantly maintains that it's a plea for peace, unity and an end to the seemingly ceaseless violence that constitutes the country's history.

The Celtic punk outfit took on the Irish standard on its 2008 album, On a Fine Spring Evening. It's a spirited reading of the traditional tune that's been played by everyone from the Dubliners to the Dropkick Murphys. The Chicago band does good by this Irish song's storied history.

Anyone who's seen The Departed (or the trailer, at the very least) can recognize ‘Shipping Up to Boston’ from Celtic rockers the Dropkick Murphys. But even before achieving mainstream notoriety, the Bostonian punks were a celebrated genre act. This track shoots the traditional Irish ballad into hyperdrive with the band's infectious energy and sloppy, fuck-it-all spirit.

This Belfast punk band started out as a rock covers group titled after (surprisingly) a piece of English history—Deep Purple's ‘Highway Star’—but somewhere along the way, the group turned toward punker impulses and a political agenda. Some call the band Ireland's answer to the Clash, and if so, it's nothing short of a biting retort. An incisive protest voice, the band's biggest single calls for revolutionary-minded consciousness: ’The R-U-C dog of repression / Is barking at your feet / Is this the kind of place you want to live?’

Ok, granted, this parent's ode to a war-bound son actually originates with an English songwriter (one Frederic Weatherly). Nonetheless, this Irish song is a classic—the rhyme and meter to ‘Londonderry Air’—and has become unofficial anthem of the diaspora. The angelic a capella ensemble Celtic Woman brings a haunting airiness to the classic with its lush vocal harmonies.