The Summer of CMAT - how Ireland's gobbiest pop star conquered the music world

RTÉ News​

2 days ago

It's out with the cigs, the Bic lighters, the "strappy white tops with no bra" and all the other garish lime green accoutrements; time to drag out the cowboy hats and boots, tooth jewels and brightly coloured tights from storage. 2024 may have been 'Brat Summer' thanks to Charli XCX, but there's a new pop hero in town: 2025 is shaping up to be the Summer of CMAT.
How did a young musician from Ireland become the kind of performer that can play to tens of thousands of fans (as she did last week), encouraging them to do the 'Dunboyne, County Meath two-step" at Primavera Sound? Barcelona has never seen the likes - but if anyone can achieve such a feat, it's Ciara Mary Alice Thompson.
The 29-year-old musician's rise has been a slow but steady one over the last five years. Considering she launched herself as a solo artist at the same time as a pandemic - which gave her little to no opportunity to promote her debut single Another Day (KFC) - she's doubly defied the odds. I remember interviewing her around the time that that song (a heartache-addled tune inspired by her debit card failing in KFC after being dumped) began to gain traction.
"I feel if you make the song good enough, structurally and sonically, then you can literally do whatever you want with the lyrics," she said. "I also find that if you make a song really funny, you also free up a lot of space to talk about serious issues without coming across as po-faced. I think a lot of people, when they write a song, they put it on a pedestal – and it shouldn't be. Music should not be that serious, it should not be treated as such a high art form – because a lot of the time, it's not."
Even in those early days - although she had previous experience in the industry as one-half of indie duo The Bad Sea - CMAT's vision was striking. She was referring to herself as a 'global pop star' long before anyone else did, but she also had the musical chops to go with the self-confidence. It was clear that she was an artist who knew her onions, speaking about influenced by Dory Previn and the McGarrigle sisters as well as Villagers, and writing songs about people like comedian Rodney Dangerfield and actor Peter Bogdanovich - figures that most of her fellow Gen Z brethren would be baffled by.
Despite her prowess on record, it's arguably CMAT's dogged touring schedule and her reputation as an outstanding live performer that has been key to spreading her gospel.
She was also a journalist's dream: an interviewee eschewing the bland media-trained responses of her young peers and unafraid to speak her mind. It's something that she has continued to do to this day. In a recent interview with The Guardian newspaper - which referred to her as "pop's gobbiest, gaudiest star", she spoke about the fallout from cancelling her set at last year's Latitude festival due to its sponsorship by Barclays. "They ghosted me," she said of a planned endorsement deal with a big brand that fell through. "I lost a lot of money. But who f**king cares? I'm aware of the fact that my career is going to struggle as a result of this stuff, but I also think everyone else in music needs a kick up the hole. Where's all the f**king artists? Where's all the f**king hippies?"
Listen: CMAT introduces her favourite songs for RTÉ Radio 1's Mixtape
Born in Cedarwood Avenue, a subsequent move to Clonee and then the aforementioned Dunboyne saw her spend her teenage years languishing in suburbia and honing her songcraft. In her early days as a solo artist, following brief spells living in Denmark and Manchester and after the break-up of The Bad Sea, she used an out-of-hours yoga studio on Camden Street as a makeshift rehearsal and recording studio, sharing it with fellow artists Aoife Nessa Frances and Rachael Lavelle as she worked a humdrum day job.
Her 2022 debut album If My Wife New I'd Be Dead made her a star in Ireland, thanks to hits like the country-pop-infused I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!, but it was 2023's Crazymad, for Me album that made international audiences sit up and take notice. High profile appearances on the BBC's Later with Jools Holland and The Graham Norton Show, as well as radio hits like the wistful pop rollick of Stay for Something, saw her plant her flag on UK territory. Suddenly, there were BRIT Award nominations (including a red carpet kerfuffle with that fabulous bum-baring dress); Robbie Williams was calling her duet with John Grand 'majestic', and Elton John himself was heaping praise on the album, calling it "All the things I love… bold, eccentric and a touch mad!"
Despite her prowess on record, it's arguably CMAT's dogged touring schedule and her reputation as an outstanding live performer that has been key to spreading her gospel. Her 5-star homecoming gigs at Dublin's Olympia Theatre in November 2023 were the real signifier that something special was happening. Here we had not only a woman who could write pop bangers with emotional depth, but who knew, alongside her excellent band, how to entertain an audience. In simple terms, she had star quality - and a forthcoming sold-out 3Arena gig this December to prove it.
Fame, of course, has not been without its pitfalls. In true CMAT style, however, she has spun at least one of them into something positive with her new single Take a Sexy Picture of Me - a song written in response to the online trolling she has had in response to her body - and it's even spawned its own TikTok dance. The Apple Dance? That was so last year, babe.
On his recent appearance on Louis Theroux's podcast, Ed Sheeran said that you need three things you need to succeed - work ethic, personality and talent - and if you have the first two, the third doesn't quite matter as much. CMAT possesses all three in abundance, so who knows where she might land with her forthcoming third album Euro-Country. She has, by her own admission, been living life on the edge in recent times: "The kind of headspace that good songs come from is one of extreme emotion, extreme depth of feeling," she said, "which has an impact on my life. I do live in that really heightened state of emotion all the time. I'm crazy and I do crazy things, and I have crazy relationships with people." Hopefully she's savvy enough to recognise when it might be time to step back from the madness. For now, at least, we can relish the Summer of CMAT. Giddy up.