A LIMERICK singer who went viral on TikTok for his Christy Moore impersonations is hoping that his viral videos won’t overshadow his original songs.
Shane Marno, real name Shane Barry, from Knockainey in County Limerick, amassed over one million views on just one of his his videos, which saw him perform Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself‘ in the uncanny style of folk legend Christy Moore.
Shane’s videos of his other artist impersonations have garnered well over 100,000 views each.
Speaking to the Limerick Post, Shane said that while the positive feedback has been fantastic, he hopes that there will be as much support for his original work.
“People keep saying they want more, which is fantastic, but I guess from my point of view, I’m obviously a full-time teacher but I have a lot of passion for writing music, so I don’t want it to overtake what I see myself doing musically,” he says.
“I don’t want to be seen as just a person who does Christy Moore impressions.”
A full-time science teacher, Shane says that music is his passion and loves getting the opportunity to play every week, as well as having his fulfilling teaching career.
Hoping to release an album in the summer, Shane is currently focussing on releasing singles, with his newest one, ‘One Less Mouth to Feed’, released this Friday (April 26).
The song is about immigration, inspired by the flood of Irish people in their 20s heading off to distant shores.
“I kept hearing of more people I grew up with moving abroad, and the fact that there’s actually so few people that I went to school with still in Ireland. I just felt kind of a bit overcome with emotion about that topic,” Shane said.
Shane draws inspiration from the world around him, with his single ‘Docks of Amsterdam‘ inspired by his time travelling in the Netherlands, and ‘War Crimes‘ penned as a heartfelt lament after watching an interview with a young Palestinian boy whose parents had just been killed in an airstrike.
He says that while music is his passion, he has no plans to give up teaching: “I’m kind of privileged at the moment to have a job that I love doing and I’m able to do music as a hobby. I’m kind of more looking at it like that. I love to teach. Music is this amazing hobby that I get to make a little bit of money from as well.”
