Fontaines D.C. offer their own live, emotive take on one of U2’s most powerful songs, “One,” for St. Patrick’s Day 2022. “Growing up in Ireland, it’s kind of impossible not to have U2's music permeate your subconscious,” the Dubliners’ drummer Tom Coll tells Apple Music. “I remember buying a U2 singles CD when I was 12, and it was one of the really formative records on rotation for quite a while. I don’t know what else to say about ‘One’ other than it's undeniably great songwriting.” Great songwriting isn’t always easy to cover, though, and Fontaines needed some time to find a meeting point between the original song and their own identity. “It’s always a challenge to take on someone else’s tune,” says Coll. “You want to do it justice but also bring a bit of yourself to it as well. We spent quite a while trying to work out how to approach it and kind of landed on a more sparse arrangement. I hope we did it justice.” That dovetailing between Irish music’s past and present is something that’s discernible on an exciting scale right now. “What’s so special about Irish musical culture is that it’s really imprinted into the community, possibly more so than other places,” says Coll. “The traditional music in pubs, and the song tradition that surrounds that, is something that I grew up around and is a really special ritualistic form of expression. I think that definitely informs a lot of the more contemporary musical output of Ireland. The disparity between the musical styles coming out of the country right now is kind of a testament to that tradition. From Kojaque to Just Mustard, Biig Piig to Bicep, and NewDad to Aoife Nessa Frances, the contemporary scene is thriving. It's a very special and proud time to be an Irish artist.”