Feargal Sharkey, OBE

Feargal Sharkey is best known as the iconic lead vocalist of pop punk band The Undertones who enjoyed hits in the late 70s and early 80s.

We took the music bit of it deadly seriously, and we tried our hardest to make perfect pop records. When it came to all the rest of it — interviews, photo sessions, Top Of The Pops, it wasn’t important. Remember I was the only one in the band with a permanent job, hard to come by at that time in Derry. I delivered TVs in a van, which was terribly handy when you were in a band.

The Undertones are responsible for a number of cult anthems including: Here Comes The Summer, My perfect Cousin, Wednesday Week and It's Going to Happen and the phenomenon that is Teenage Kicks, recorded in 1978 it was the band's debut single. The song was also the all time favorite track of BBC Radio 1 DJ, John Peel who on one occasion is known to of played the song twice in a row, with the explanation given to his audience being...

It doesn't get better much better than this !

When Sharkey left The Undertones in 1983 he worked with Vince Clarke on the Assembly project, the band enjoyed a No. 4 hit with the song Never Never. In 1985 he had a huge solo hit with the song A Good Heart which went to No.1 in several countries and his debut solo album reached No.12 in the UK Album Charts.

In the early 1990s Sharkey moved into the business side of the music industry, initially as A&R for Polydor Records. In 2008, Sharkey was appointed as the CEO of British Music Rights and in 2019 he was awarded an OBE for services to Music.

The internet has provided colossal opportunities for all kinds of artist, musicians and performers. You can sit at home right now in your bedroom make a piece of music. If you buy an Apple Mac it comes with GarageBand in it the most extraordinary bit of music software and half an hour later post it up on a website and potentially have millions if not billions - stunning!

The bit where it all goes out of kilter, if a musician decides that they want to put their work up on the internet and give it away for free, I feel compelled to support and applaud and encourage that musician. Equally, I feel compelled to support and applaud and encourage those that feel they want to be paid for their time and effort and I think that people that aren't sensitive to that idea need to spend a bit of time thinking about what they are doing. Because it is not some harmless pastime and it does have an impact on people and frequently it's people out trying to make a decent living by making some music and clearly I think that is morally wrong.

I'm an eternal optimist and think there's some 17 year-old somewhere about to create the most incredible piece of music anyone has ever heard and, if any country on earth can deliver that, it probably is the United Kingdom.

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