Interview with… Kodaline

Kodaline returned last year with their highly anticipated third album ‘Politics Of Living’, quietly confident that it’s the best of their career. Now, the Irish quartet will be embarking on a highly anticipated UK tour this November including a very special date at Manchester O2 Victoria Warehouse on November 16th.
Read what the band had to say about their huge year in music:
‘Politics of Living’ was your third full record, was it third time lucky…Is this your best record yet?
Music is so subjective and opinionated that you’re never going to please everyone! We write music we like but it’s hard to say it’s our best, everyone of our albums is our best!
You performed ‘All I Want’ onstage with Ed Sheeran, receiving a great response. What does a reaction like that do to a band?
It was an incredible experience to play in our hometown to 80000 people! It makes you hungry to try and get to that level of show and play to crowds that size every night. Ed is such a gent of a man and it was such a huge honour for us that he asked us to play with him!
You’ve played a few festivals over the last couple of months, what’s been the highlight?
Festival season is incredible. You get to play to huge crowds in beautiful places and it’s a real opportunity to try and gain new fans! It’s also a challenge to get people’s attention and hold it for 60 minutes when there is some much other music going on but we love it!
What’s the strangest thing that happened whilst playing these festivals?
Nothing really, it’s been pretty chilled out! We have a great crew with us that make sure nothing strange happens!
You teased a new EP earlier in the year, can you tell us anything about that?
Yeah it’s going great, we’re back in the studio in between these festivals to finish it and hopefully it will be released later this year! It’s just the 4 of us in a studio with no one else and we love it!
From your Spotify, it’s evident your songs grab the attention of people from across the world, with listeners from India, Mexico, Brazil as well as Ireland. Why do you think your songs are enjoyed by people across the world?
Music is a international language, and the raw emotion we put into our songs I guess translates all over the world! It’s pretty incredible and we never thought when we started making music that we would actually be playing shows all over the world, we had ambitions but that fact it’s cake true is amazing!
You ran a competition for bands to open for your recent Dublin show. How important is it for you to continue supporting grass roots music?
It’s hugely important for us because we know how hard it is to break into the industry and get noticed so anything we can do to help we will! It’s great that we have the ability todo that and it was great for us as we got to hear loads of great new Irish music!
You’re prepping for a UK tour this winter, have you got any tricks up your sleeve for those shows?
Yes and we can’t tell!
Are you guys looking forward to playing in Manchester?

Yes! Manchester shows have always been incredible, it’s a great city and the people always show us so much love!

Why should people go and see a Kodaline show?

Because you’ll have a great time!

There’s a strange statistic that 80% of your shows end up in a wedding, why do you think that is?

We have a song called “the one” and we wrote it for a friends wedding and now loads of people use it for their first dances etc which is cool!

Hahaha I don’t think so!