St. Patrick's day is arriving once again this year on March 17, a special time to celebrate Ireland and Irish-American heritage, including with music. It's no surprise classic rockers such as GRAMMY winners U2 and Van Morrison receive spikes in YouTube searches every year, but thanks to Billboard and YouTube's analytics, this year we get to know what acts got a special green bump last year at the leading video destination.
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Three GRAMMY nominees saw their YouTube views come close to doubling during last year's St. Patrick's day, according to Billboard's list: Celtic Woman, the Corrs and House of Pain. Celtic Woman have a new album, Ancient Land, being released today. The Corrs' 2017 album, Jupiter Calling, was produced by T Bone Burnett and gave Ireland's most famous family band more of the raw recording style that Burnett is known for in the Americana genre. Rappers House Of Pain had disbanded by 1997, after the release of their third album. Their 1992 GRAMMY-nominated hit "Jump Around" remains an Irish flag planted firmly in the rap genre.
An intriguing byproduct of the analytics provided to Billboard's piece by YouTube is that less-recognized bands become dramatically more recognized on St. Patrick's day. So while Celtic Woman's views doubled, Celtic Thunder's views more than tripled, as did the Waterboys, although.technically the group is primarily from Scotland.
The Billboard article includes a video playlist for the five bands who saw their views increase during last year's St. Patrick's day by ten times or even more. In reverse order they are the Rumjacks, the Pogues, Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, and the Dubliners. It's only fitting that the Dubliners, a traditional Irish band formed in 1962 in Dublin's O'Donoghue's Pub, led YouTube's green-spiked traffic with 15 times more views than usual.
Celebrating Irish spirit and music, including its diversity of styles, provides a unique time to reflect on this cultural connection that has played such a prominent and continuing role in American life.
