Pop singer CMAT has criticised the cutting of Irish language lyrics of her new song Euro-Country on BBC Radio, describing it as “a crazy edit”.
The song was released on Tuesday and debuted on BBC Radio 1 at about 6pm. The first 45 seconds of the nearly five-minute song feature lyrics in Irish, but these were cut for the broadcast.
“It was not my decision to have the Irish language edited out of the first ever play of Euro-Country on radio,” CMAT said.
“I don’t know if it was a mistake or what happened, but that was not my decision. I don’t know who edited it out – that was crazy of them.”
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The Meath-born singer, full name Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, said on social media that BBC representatives had been in contact with her since “and said that they are going to play the Irish language intro, the full version of Euro-Country ... to make up for it”.
“Not my decision, but they’re fixing it,” she said.
The BBC said the station had broadcast the radio version of the song “that was supplied by the record label”.
“BBC Radio 1 did not edit the Irish language from this single,” a BBC spokesperson told The Irish Times.
The broadcaster said the station “has already played the full version that includes the Irish language intro ... and it will be played again” on two further shows.
The lyrics at the start of the song are: “Cad is gá dom a dhéanamh mura bhfuil mé ag bualadh leat? / Tá ceann folamh agam, agus pearsantacht nua / Eirím níos dofheicthe, is tú imithe, ó mo shoal / Níl aon rud fágtha sa scátháin / An mbeidh mé álainn mhaol?”
This translates in English to: “What am I to do if I’m not meeting you? / I have an empty head, and a new personality / I become more invisible, you’re gone from my life / There’s nothing left in the mirror / Will I be beautiful bald?”
The song’s middle section, which references the spike in suicides in Ireland after the 2008 financial crash, was also edited out of the radio broadcast.
“All the big boys / All the Berties / All the envelopes, yeah they hurt me,” she sings in reference to the financial crash and scandal surrounding former taoiseach Bertie Ahern. “I was 12 when the das started killing themselves all around me.”
CMAT said on social media: “They also did a crazy editing out of [that line], which I guess is more understandable.”
In an interview with The Irish Times, she said previously that “everyone else on the estate we lived in worked in construction, or in shops, and they all lost their jobs. Everyone became unemployed” in the aftermath of the crash.
“Then, in the village I grew up in, there was a year or 18 months where loads of the people I went to school with, their dads started killing themselves because they’d lost everything in the crash,” she said.