For weeks, anticipation had been building across Cork. Conversations in cafés, offices and pubs kept circling back to the same question: who had managed to get tickets? Long before CMAT arrived at Virgin Media Park, the sense of a city gathering for something significant was unmistakable.
When CMAT emerged on stage, she was greeted less like a visiting performer and more like a returning hero. The familiarity between artist and audience was evident from the outset, but it was during I Don’t Really Care for You that the scale of the connection became impossible to ignore. Thousands of voices met every lyric, transforming the song into a communal singalong that at times threatened to overpower the sound system itself.
What has made CMAT such a distinctive figure in contemporary Irish music was on full display throughout the set. Her songs move effortlessly between country, pop, heartbreak, and comedy, often within the same verse. Lesser artists can make those shifts feel awkward; CMAT makes them feel natural. The crowd followed her wherever she led, embracing both the emotional gut-punches and the moments of absurdist humor that have become central to her appeal.
She closed with Stay for Something, running through the crowd as she sang. It was a fitting finale. Not because it was spectacular, but because it distilled the defining quality of the evening: proximity. For all the growth in venues, audiences, and profile, CMAT still projects the feeling that she is in on the joke with her fans rather than performing above them.
BIIRD photos:
CMAT photos & set-list:
Set-list:
Tree Six Foive
The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station
I Don’t Really Care for You
When a Good Man Cries
2 Wrecked 2 Care
Aw, Shoot!
Running/Planning
Coronation St.
Have Fun!
Take a Sexy Picture of Me
Where Are Your Kids Tonight?
Such a Miranda
Rent
Euro-Country
I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!
Stay for Something
Photos & words – Shane J Horan @shanejhoran
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