page_title: Maria Doyle Kennedy
section_title: Music career
hierarchical_section_title: Maria Doyle Kennedy / Music career
caption_attribution_description: English: we are Maria Doyle Kennedy's record label and this image is owned by us. We are providing it here as a reasonable picture of Maria for everyone to enjoy.
context_page_description: Maria Doyle Kennedy is an Irish singer, songwriter, and actress. With a singing and acting career that has spanned more than 30 years, she has established herself as one of Ireland's most prolific artists and entertainers. As an actress, she is best known for her extensive television roles as Patsy in Father Ted, Catherine of Aragon in The Tudors, Vera Bates in Downton Abbey, Siobhán Sadler in Orphan Black, and Jocasta Cameron in Outlander.
  Doyle Kennedy has also appeared in numerous films, including The Commitments, The General, Miss Julie, Tara Road, Albert Nobbs, Byzantium, Jupiter Ascending, Sing Street, and The Conjuring 2. In 2020, she was listed as number 46 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
  As a singer, Doyle Kennedy has released two studio albums with The Black Velvet Band and nine as a solo artist.
context_section_description: Doyle Kennedy joined a band while still in college, performing with Hothouse Flowers during the band's early years in the mid-'80s. She appeared on their 1987 single "Love Don't Work This Way". She left the band shortly after to join The Black Velvet Band with her future husband, Kieran Kennedy. They formed originally to enter a Slogadh competition, that they eventually won, but music quickly became a motivating force in her life. The band released their first album, When Justice Came, in 1989. Recorded in Los Angeles in 1989, it reached number four on the Irish charts, and is ranked among the best Irish albums of the late 1980s. She then united with producers Clive Langer and Allen Winstanley to record her second Black Velvet Band album, King of Myself, in 1992.
  The Lady Sings The Blues, a compilation album featuring Doyle Kennedy alongside Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, and Annie Lennox followed, and proved to be a best-selling album in 1994. It also established Doyle Kennedy in new markets throughout Europe, the U.S., and Japan. Touring Europe for the first time, she got rave reviews from The Guardian and The Times. She produced a documentary, Golden Boy, based on the life and work of Irish artist Patrick Scott, for which she specifically created the production company Mermaid Films. She has appeared as a broadcaster on Irish television, filling in for John Kelly on his Mystery Train show and for Tom Dunne on Pet Sounds. Doyle Kennedy also hosted an RTÉ musical series Borderline in the late 1980s.
  After releasing music with The Black Velvet Band, Doyle Kennedy left the group to pursue a solo career in music. In 2001, Doyle Kennedy released music on Mermaid Records, a label she founded herself in 2000. Her debut solo album Charm was released in 2001, following the release of the two lead singles, "Stars Above" and "Babes". She coordinated Sirens, which is a compilation album of female artists and was released in 2003. In the same year, she performed on the first series of Other Voices. She released the album Skullcover for a limited time between 2004 and 2005. The album contained her covers of songs such as "Lovesong", "Video Killed the Radio Star", and "Still in Love with You".
  Doyle Kennedy then released the alternative folk album Mütter in 2007 along with accompanying singles "Fuckability" and "Forty Days". After the release of "Fuckability", Hot Press praised the single and stated that Doyle Kennedy "is one of the finest voices this country has ever produced." She was subsequently nominated in the Best Irish Female category at the 2008 Meteor Awards. An accompanying DVD album for this record was also released in the same year. Entitled The Band of Maria's, it included exclusive live material from some of Doyle Kennedy's promotional tour venues. In 2011, Doyle Kennedy and her husband Kieran released a collaboration album entitled The Storms Are on the Ocean. The album features a collection of Appalachian folk and country songs. In the same year, Doyle Kennedy released La Sirena 1992-1997, a collection of rock-oriented tracks that had been recorded prior to her solo career. Her sixth album project, the folk-infused Sing, was released in September 2012 with Warner Music Group holding distribution rights to the album within the UK. In 2014 and 2015, Doyle Kennedy released two more albums: Maria Live, an album of songs performed live at Vicar Street and Pepper Canister Church, with her husband Kieran providing the instrumentation and production; and Mütter's Daughter, an album containing unreleased and re-released tracks from the album Mütter.
  Doyle Kennedy worked with her husband to create a follow-up album to Sing. In 2015, she wrote a song entitled "Pride" as a response to the Irish Marriage Referendum of 2015. She also composed a song about the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in response to international media coverage of the Ferguson unrest and other police-related violence in the United States. Both songs are confirmed to be appearing on the record. "Pride," the first single from her self-titled ninth st
caption: Doyle Kennedy's album cover for Skullcover, released in 2004
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