Kneecap: a 12-minute short film for “Irish Goodbye”

Kneecap’s new album, “Fenian” is out (here is our interview). One of the symbolic tracks is “Irish Goodbye“, the latest single from the album and presented with a 12-minute short film. With the participation of Kae Tempest, “Irish Goodbye” is a deeply personal and touching song written by Móglaí Bap for her mother, who tragically passed awayand the film, shot and directed by Thomas James, perfectly captures the individual’s profound emotional intensity. One of the symbolic phrases of the piece is: “It’s not a problem, I just wanted to say that I missed you.”

Móglaí Bap published a post on social media about it:

I never thought about writing a song about this. But someone sent my brother a documentary about my father in the 90s, when he was president of Conradh na Gaeilge. The crew came to our house, and we were just kids, doing homework and playing. We weren’t a family that had videos of ourselves, only photographs, so it was the first time I saw my mother in a video. And he was happy. This affected me deeply, seeing her happy. It was very exciting. I had already written a song about her, “MAM,” which came out in 2020. She was suffering from depression at the time. I thought if I wrote that song, she would listen to it and maybe recognize her own worth, because when you have depression you can’t see it. Around that time we went for a walk, and I told her that I had written a song for her, but it wasn’t finished yet, so I would wait until the next week to let her hear it. But it was now too late. Suicide is difficult. And when someone suffers from depression and dies by suicide, it’s hard to remember the good times. We get trapped in dark moments.

Then he continues:

“Irish Goodbye” is about the simple things my mother and I used to do together. I never realized that it would be the little everyday things that I would miss the most: a walk in the park, her scolding me or keeping me in line, her advice. It’s all those little things that you miss. Watching that video and writing this song unlocked something in my mind, allowing me to replace sad memories with happy ones. It helped me visualize better moments, instead of always being angry at the world. Dan Carey wrote the music, and then Kae Tempest joined, which was a great honor. Kae brought incredible vulnerability and emotion to the song. It was a really special moment for us.

And finally the conclusion:

Suicide is something extremely complex. It’s hard to face the reality of it. When you try to process it, you get trapped in a sort of limbo: you understand and then you don’t understand, you’re sad and then angry, you feel shame and guilt. There is pain, sure, but it’s a particular kind of pain. It feels like you’re carrying around a different weight. It’s a very difficult conversation to have. Who really wants to talk about it? Death is depressing enough. But we need to talk about it, because we need to lighten that extra weight of shame and guilt that adds to the pain. You can’t change what happened. You can’t always save people from themselves.

People ask me how I dealt with it. I didn’t. It takes years. Survive as best you can, moment by moment. But there is also help. When I was ready, therapy was what helped me. Many of our parents’ generation don’t believe in therapy. But we are different. We can ask for help, we should, and there should be services to support us. As Irish people, we have a good relationship with death and its rituals. We can remember people as they were, not as they ended up. I hope that this type of death, however terrible, can also be included in this approach, however difficult it is to accept.

I hope that by listening to the song and watching the video, something will click in people and give them some relief. You can’t carry all this around and blame yourself. It’s not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s about the drafting process. And it can be addressed. Yes it can.