A decade ago it spawned a virtual movement. Now 'A Woman's Heart' is back. Why, Tony Clayton-Lea asks Eleanor McEvoy.
What's that sound, that low throbbing? Could it be the Woman's Heart bandwagon, beating a path back to your town? Ten years after the concerts, the gender politics and Only A Woman's Heart - yes, that song, namer of a virtual movement - it's back for an anniversary tour.
The idea sprang not from Eleanor McEvoy, who wrote the song, but from MCD, the concert promoter, as a money-spinner of sorts.
As a well-worn promotional concept, the tour will succeed or fail on whether the song still means anything to the Irish. The concerts are bound to succeed, thanks to their participants, each of them with their own fans as well as a certain crossover appeal.
Think of it as a Spice Girls vibe for the over-35s: Mary Coughlan as Jazzy Spice, Maura O'Connell as Country Spice, Dolores Keane as Trad Spice, newcomer Cara Dillon as Rootsy Spice and McEvoy as Singer-Songwriter Spice.
McEvoy clearly expects the first question: why? Along with O'Connell - easily Ireland's most astute interpretive singer - she seems the one least in need of such a profile-hiking outing.
She says she loves a challenge and looks forward to the fun of it all, which tells some but hardly all of the reasons for saying yes - which surely include the twin carrots of money and the opportunity to play big venues, something McEvoy hasn't done since reverting to her highly successful acoustic-troubadour mode a few years ago.
"I bailed out of the Woman's Heart thing early on," she admits, implicating the almost suffocating song and issues of 10 years ago.
And she had fallen out of love with the song. "When I wrote it, first I was very proud of it, loved it, as I do with my songs, but I lost respect for it along the way; it's as if it became a black sheep. It took on a life and connotations of its own, a middle-of-the-road, bland thing, and I think that's why I wanted to dissociate myself from it a little bit."
But McEvoy has since rediscovered Only A Woman's Heart. She had tried out numerous fussy and frilly versions - reggae, full-on rock, "things I'd felt in my heart and soul didn't work" - eventually concluding it was, perhaps, best served up straight.
Yet the song had taken on a life of its own, not only because of its tarnished ubiquity, which made all but the most ardent fan well and truly sick of it, but also because it had sparked a bout of sexual politics - media commentators, mostly male, were quick to point out that men's hearts, too, suffered from emotional thrashings.
Have those connotations changed in the past 10 years? "There might still be those associations attached to the song, certainly for other people," says McEvoy, "but without meaning to be flippant, it's irrelevant to me. The actual song is just one of many I do, and then I go on and do something else.
"Gender itself is a funny issue for me in music. For a start, everyone said that the song was a great thing for women, because it brought them out to the fore. But did it?"
They weren't the first women to make music, she points out - although, as she adds: "On the first Woman's Heart tour, there wasn't one female musician. Think about that: every woman had their own band and they consisted of men. It was the same, more or less, with the first album.
"So you had a huge event, hailed as a fantastic thing for women, yet the input was largely from men. Women had a lot further to go."
She believes some people misinterpreted the song, which she used to despair about. "Now I chuckle," she says with a shake of her head. "I wanted to say to some people to grow up. I mean, the amount of songs out there that go the other way. At the same time, there is an issue now of being in danger of men-bashing, which I find really offensive. Where it gets very serious is in the area of paternity rights, which is appalling in this country. Men are blackmailed on that" - not being allowed to see their children - "on a daily basis."
McEvoy has witnessed remarkable changes in her life over the past decade. No sooner had she walked away from the Woman's Heart tours than she signed to Geffen Records and, subsequently, Sony. Major-label conflict in the late 1990s led to her extricating herself from the contracts, from whence she bounced back last year with her own label, Blue Dandelion Records, and Yola, by far her most rounded album.
Now the mother of toddler Sarah Jane - "without a hyphen," she directs, "something which was negotiated during labour" - she says the most important way she has changed is in redefining her definition of success.
"In my mid-20s, success was all about getting out there and doing the music. My approach to life now is more holistic. I love my music, but not at the expense of my baby. When I was pregnant, which I discovered when I was on the road, I thought, what in the name of God am I going to do? I had tours booked, but I kept on. And it was fine: I brought her on tour with me.
"It's getting a little bit harder now, because she wants to crawl down the centre of the plane rather than sleeping in my arms, but I have a good support network. Everything now is on a different level."
After the 10th-anniversary concerts, which may tour Britain, there seems little else McEvoy can do to get her face and music out into the public even more. Yet she has a surprise in store, she says. "I have plans to do an Eat Your Woman's Heart Out tour some year!"
A Woman's Heart - A Decade On begins on Wednesday at UCH, Limerick before moving to Mount Errigal, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, on Thursday; Waterfront Hall, Belfast, on Friday; Goffs, Co Kildare on Saturday; Royal Theatre, Castlebar, Co Mayo, on Sunday; and the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, from April 7th to 12th. Tickets (from €22) are available from the venues or from Ticketmaster (1890-925100/www.ticketmaster.ie)
