Divine Comedy a UK band?

[melisandre]

Back to nationalities again… I noticed that the Divine Comedy are identified as an Irish band though they are from Northern Ireland so are technically a UK band, right?

Not sure if there are strong feelings about this sort of thing. I don’t really mind though it just seemed an error on the site (I was just surprised to see in Irish band on my britpop chart)

It could be that other Northern Irish bands are often identified as Irish rather than UK (worth checking? ) Anyway, happy to hear other thoughts on this on case I am being naive

[melisandre]

Other Northern Irish bands seem to have the UK flag, so it looks like it’s just The Divine Comedy that might be misidentified (wikipedia and allmusic have them as being from Northern Ireland).

[MadhattanJack]

[Patman360]

Northern Ireland is a bit of an odd one when it comes to this, in that people there can essentially choose to be Irish or British citizens, which does muddy the waters.

The violence has naturally died down many years ago now and most people are reasonable and rational about it, younger people certainly mix more, etc. but I’ve friends from Northern Ireland who would still refer to themselves purely as Irish or British and would never associate with the other flag, use certain place names, etc.

The Divine Comedy are one of those odd exceptions that go both ways, Hannon’s from ‘the north’ in reality, but would have grown up as a Protestant in predominantly catholic areas near the border.

I think he doesn’t really put a nationally on himself as a result, is my understanding (a refreshing take if you ask me), you can see the influence on the band from Ireland and the UK, supporting members to him have also been from both if memory serves and they’ve made their name playing in both areas back in the day. He lives in ‘the republic’ now but in reality it’s one of those hard ones to quantify as most people had a side and stuck to it and he just floats in the middle somewhere.
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2023
2022

[melisandre]

Ah, that explains it. Thanks for giving some insight. I figured it might be more complicated than I was thinking. It might just be simplest to leave The Divine Comedy as an Irish band since Neil Hannon now lives in the Republic of Ireland.

[melisandre]