The Glasshouse

Husky. Bitter-sweet. The voice of Irish blues.

Mary Coughlan is often described as the greatest female vocalist that Ireland has ever produced, standing alongside some of the world’s most iconic jazz singers. She’s unique in blending whisky-blurred, smoke-seared, husky notes with the laconic wit of Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee. She draws the line of deep, down and dirty blues singers back to Bessie Smith with the sardonic, bitter-sweet defiance and despair of Edith Piaf. Yet Mary Coughlan delivers it all in a delicious and unapologetic Irish drawl: sceptical, rueful, mournful, melting and ardent for love.

Mary Coughlan is one of our finest singers because over 40 years she has made the most grown-up, uncompromising, wholly personal yet utterly universal music on either side of the Atlantic about what goes on between men and women.