A Chat with Colm Warren (29.08.26)
With ‘Good Morning’, Colm Warren delivers his most intimate and emotionally affecting solo release to date, exploring grief, friendship and the quiet power of music to connect us in life’s darkest moments. Written in support of longtime collaborator John Byrne and his family, the song is a deeply personal reflection that resonates far beyond its origins. We spoke to Colm Warren about the story behind the track, his uncompromising artistic philosophy, and why emotional honesty remains at the heart of everything he creates.
OSR: You’ve always written from a deeply personal place, but ‘Good Morning’ is perhaps your most intimate release yet. At what point did you realise this was a story that needed to become a song rather than remain a private expression of support for John Byrne and his family?
Colm Warren: Well, I think I often use music to express the things that are felt most deeply but are not often or easily said out loud. It felt the most natural way to try to express solidarity with another person experiencing deep personal pain but also steeped in music. I’d also like to think that people hearing it who have suffered deep loss or grief in their own lives might be able to take something from it as well – and, as with all the songs I’ve written touching on these sorts of themes, that’s the point.
OSR: John Byrne has collaborated on every one of your solo releases, but this is undoubtedly the most emotionally significant performance he has ever contributed. What was it like watching him record the piano parts, and did those sessions change the song in ways you hadn’t anticipated?
Colm Warren: John’s piano arrangement is absolutely inspired in this as far as I’m concerned. Hearing him play it on a grand piano in Peter Maher’s studio in Tipperary when we were recording moved us all to tears. The recording of this track was, without doubt, extremely difficult for all involved for obvious reasons. However, we were all quietly determined to get it right – and I think we ended up in the right place.
OSR: One of the defining characteristics of your solo work is its restraint. Rather than relying on dramatic crescendos or overt sentimentality, you often allow silence and subtlety to carry the emotional weight. Is that an instinctive part of your songwriting, or has it developed over the course of your solo career?
Colm Warren: It’s probably instinctive, but definitely deliberate. I always try to write in ways that mean that my own personal experiences might have a chance of translating to or chiming with other people emotionally. It’s about connection and letting the music say what is really going on. I always like to leave some room for people to interpret songs in ways that are most meaningful to them. I think most people, especially the strongest and best people, are far deeper and more fragile than they ever let on publicly or to the world. Lots of times when people talk to me about songs I’ve written, it’s just a few words and a look in the eyes or whatever. We both know what’s going on and that the connection has happened – no need to spell it all out.
OSR: Since returning to music in 2020, you’ve consistently explored subjects many artists tend to avoid, including grief, illness, identity, family and inclusion. Do you see these songs as individual snapshots of your life, or are they all part of a larger artistic conversation you’ve been building over the past six years?
Colm Warren: Ah, it’s probably a bit of both to be honest. Some songs and themes are very connected and others I’ve just done because I finally found the time to properly record them. As an independent artist, recording when I can whilst still having to navigate “real life”, I don’t necessarily get the luxury of planning or delivering musical output in as ordered or structured a way as I might otherwise like. I often wonder what a properly managed “project” could look like!!
OSR: There is a striking sense of trust throughout ‘Good Morning’. The production never overwhelms the lyrics, the orchestration remains understated, and every musical choice seems designed to serve the emotion rather than compete with it. How collaborative was that process with producer Joe Egan and mixer Aidan Cunningham?
Colm Warren: Very. We developed the song in the same way as we approach any other. What does this song need and worked from there. The fact the team has now been together and worked on so many songs together over the past few years really helps, obviously. Everyone knows the gig at this point and is brilliant at what they do. To be honest, I always say it feels more like a band than a solo thing to me really. We just don’t get the chance to play enough together because of different locations and life obstacles, etc. That’s the one thing I’d really love to change – but we need to be able to feed our kids like!!
OSR: Your music has always resisted commercial expectations in favour of emotional honesty. In an industry that often rewards immediacy and trend-driven songwriting, has remaining true to your own artistic instincts ever felt like a difficult path, or has that independence become your greatest creative freedom?
Colm Warren: No. I couldn’t give one fuck about commercial trends and all the bullshit parts of the music industry. That has absolutely nothing to do with genuine art or why I need to write songs and make music. Don’t get me wrong, it is definitely extremely difficult doing things this way, and I often feel a total outsider to the “music industry”. But I’ve decided to work to enable me to make the music I want to make – for my own reasons. And I only want to do it with people who have genuine integrity. Otherwise, what’s the point? Money? Fame? Likes on fuckin TikTok? Good luck with that.
OSR: Many listeners will inevitably connect ‘Good Morning’ to their own experiences of bereavement, even though it tells a very specific story. When you’re writing something so personal, do you consciously think about creating space for other people’s experiences, or does that universality emerge naturally once the song is finished?
Colm Warren: Yes. As I mentioned, that’s definitely a very conscious thing I’ll do when writing. Even though a song might be inspired by one particular experience or another, I’ll often then be thinking about multiple people in different but similar situations that it could apply to as I write and perform it. I don’t know how successful I am at it, but I’m certainly conscious of it.
OSR: Looking back at your journey from fronting Belfast punk band The Twenty to creating orchestral, piano-led songs like ‘Good Morning’, do you feel you’ve become a fundamentally different artist, or do you see the same emotional instincts running through both chapters of your career?
Colm Warren: No, I’m definitely the same artist. Now a lot more experienced at what it takes to record and develop songs after their original composition and all of that, I’d say, but it’s still all emotionally driven stuff that just needs “out” of me. Some of The Twenty songs might sound different if I recorded them again now, because of increased experience in a recording environment in particular, but they’d still be full of anger and frustration at their core. Some of them, I wouldn’t touch at all, because we got them done just fine at the time and they are what they were meant to be.
OSR: Your catalogue has become increasingly reflective with each release, yet there’s always a sense of hope beneath even your most heartbreaking songs. After creating ‘Good Morning’, what did the experience teach you about friendship, resilience and the role music can play when life presents its most difficult moments?
Colm Warren: It’s nice of you to say that, and I’m very happy you picked that up because that is always the intention and what I believe. This song reaffirms to me, again, that there’s a lot more going on than what we can see on the surface – and genuine art often captures and connects that for people. There’s always a place for music and song as pure entertainment, with not much more beneath that, but the deepest songs, music and art hit differently. Fundamentally, someone genuinely writing a song to deal with their own grief, loss, emotional turmoil or whatever, by definition, never starts off with an intention for it as anything other than that. It might go on to be heard by no one or millions, but if that was truly the genuine motivation for writing it, it will have already served its purpose for the artist.
Many thanks to Colm Warren for speaking with us. Find out more about Colm Warren on his Facebook and Spotify
