With just over a month until the release of her third album, CMAT has dropped its title track, ‘EURO-COUNTRY’. This is the fourth preview of her upcoming work, with three singles already released, and it stands out as the most emotive yet. After the viral success of ‘Take A Sexy Picture Of Me’, the bar was certainly high – but CMAT has always made outdoing herself seem effortless.
Taking to Substack, CMAT outlined the “three main points” of her upcoming album, with one of them being her home country Ireland, which she describes as the “love of” her “life” and “the most toxic boyfriend” she’s “had”. This complicated relationship takes centre stage on ‘EURO-COUNTRY’.
The track opens with an introduction sung in the Irish language, before delving into the isolation she felt growing up in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. She describes the country’s “lack of identity” and a widespread feeling of hopelessness (“I think we’re gonna die trying”).
The bridge marks the song’s emotional climax, as CMAT belts out: “I was twelve when the das started killing themselves all around me”, a harrowing reference to the rise in suicide rates linked to economic collapse and financial instability.
Sonically, the track is sweet but tinged with pain and longing. The conflict between its warm surface and devastating subject matter mirrors CMAT’s relationship with her home country, making it easier for us to understand why she describes it as a “toxic boyfriend”. Overall, ‘EURO-COUNTRY’ is a composition of painful lyrics masked in lush harmonies, with the end result being a track that is hauntingly beautiful and entirely evocative.
Words by Zahra Hanif
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