Mickey’s got the world (again)

TWENTY years ago, Lifford man Mickey Joe Harte carried a nation’s hopes on his shoulders when he represented Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest. An eleventh-place finish saw Mickey, and the song, catapulted to stardom, reaching number one in the Irish charts.

Twenty years on, Mickey has dusted off his most famous song for a charity re-release, only this time in Irish!

As re-releases go it’s certainly a strange one – so what’s it all about?

“It was all Today FM’s doing to be honest,” Mickey Joe explained. “The Dermot and Dave show have a roving reporter called Cathal Minogue. He was challenged to sing a song in Irish and he chose, ‘We’ve Got The World’ as part of the radio station’s Big Busk, raising money for homeless charity Focus Ireland.

“So Cathal learned the song and it went down really well. Dermot and Dave said they would release the song as a single if they got 10,000 euro on the day; they got 14,000 so I guess we had to go for it!”

He continued, “Firstly we had to translate the song from English into Irish.

“We sent the song to a group of native Irish speakers in Galway to translate it and I had my mum who is a gaelgoir look over it as well. The problem with translating into a different language is that meanings can change so we had to fit the translation in places to keep the meaning of the song. While this might not be a literal translation, it fits the ethos of it.

“We also had to get permission from the writers and publishers which wasn’t too difficult but it did take a wee bit of time to get sorted.”

A couple of days in the studio and ‘We’ve Got The World Tonight’ or to give the song is Irish name, ‘Ta An Domhann Aginn Anocht’ was ready to go and, just like twenty years ago, it hit the top spot!

Mickey says he was ‘delighted’ with how it turned out and remarks that the translation is being used to help students learning the language, something about which he’s very proud.