User talk:Jennifer.raffertyjen92

Aishling Rafferty


Aishling Rafferty is a 20 year old country music star from Knockshegowna in Co Tipperary. Aishling was the 2022 Season 18 Winner of the hit Mentor on the show was the one and only “Mike Denver”. She devoted her win to her loving family. Aishling has had many Chart topping songs such as “Truck Driving Woman”, Darling Say You’ll Love Me When I’m Old, “Grampa”, “Mama He’s Crazy”, “Suds in the Bucket”, and many more. She has recently brought out a fantastic album called “Love me When I’m Old”.



Aishling has done a lot of charity work travelling to Lourdes to help take care of the sick and elderly, she has also travelled to Romania with Habitat For Humanity to help build and orphanages. Her first CD that she released the profits were donated to The Irish Hospice Foundation. She has received Pope John Paul Awards for her charity work and in 2020 she also received a National Garda Youth Award. Aishling Rafferty is a current student in The World Academy of Music in The University of Limerick.



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-“StarTraxCountry” AISHLING RAFFERTYis one of Irish country music’s most promising young stars, and she’s about to push her career into top gear with her brand new single, TRUCK DRIVING WOMAN.

The track, written by Johnny Wilson and Roland Pike, is Aishling’s second release of 2021, following on from Darling, Say You’ll Love Me When I’m Old. Not only did that single further showcase Aishling’s beautiful voice, it gave her plenty of reasons to celebrate too, topping the iTunes Irish country chart, the Irish Country Music Radio station airplay chart, and with its video garnering more than 330,000 views on the Irish Music Memories Facebook page. So one thing is for certain, Aishling, from Knockshegowna in Tipperary, is proving to be a knock-out with country music fans, and Truck Driving Woman – which has now given her a second iTunes #1 in 2021 -looks set to see her fanbase grow still further.

Both Darling, Say You’ll Love Me When I’m Old and Truck Driving Woman are set to feature on the nineteen year old’s debut album, an eagerly anticipated collection which it’s expected fans will have in their hands later this year. Aishling, a student of voice at the Irish World Academy, has already recorded a six-track EP, My Journey, with 50% of the proceeds from that project being donated to the Irish Hospice Foundation. However, with her reputation quickly growing, requests for a full album have been coming thick and fast, and Truck Driving Woman is sure to whet the appetite of fans even more.



“You’ll certainly need your dancing shoes on for this one!”, declared Aishling, adding, “I’m super-excited for you all to hear this one. As anyone who knows me will probably already know, I’m a bit of a dancer! Before everything happened with Covid, I was like so many people, just loving to get out on a dancefloor as often as I could. And I can’t tell you how much I miss it. But when it came to thinking about songs for my album and especially what would follow ‘Darling, Say You’ll Love Me When I’m Old,’ I realised that what I really wanted was something that I didn’t really have yet, a great song for dancing and getting people up and out on the floor!”

And Aishling had just the song in mind, a tune made famous by one of her heroes, the iconic Philomena Begley, as she explained…“I think every female country singer in Ireland probably looks up to Philomena, to be honest. I definitely do, I always have. I’ve always listened to her albums, that’s one of the ways I fell in love with country music. And it’s one of the reasons why I first started dreaming of being a country singer, from watching Philomena perform. Seeing the way she could connect with her audience and how they’d respond to her has always been so amazing to see. And that’s something she’s still doing, right up to today. So that’s where I first heard ‘Truck Driving Woman.'”

“I started putting a list together”, continued Aishling, “of possible songs I wanted to do this time, and as soon as I wrote this one down I kind of knew that was the list finished! I just couldn’t imagine doing anything else right now, so it became an easy choice in the end. We’re heading into a brighter time of the year too, so I think something that has a bit of life in it will hopefully be something that people can enjoy with a smile on their face.”

Originally recorded by American country star Norma Jean, Truck Driving Woman was a single for the Oklahoman in 1968, featuring on her Body And Mind album. Norma Jean (full-name Norma Jean Beasler) began her ‘showbiz’ career at the tender age of just twelve, singing at different radio stations in the ‘Sooner’ state. She went on to become a member of the Porter Wagoner Show for several years during the sixties, accruing thirteen singles on Billboard’s Country Top 40 in the same decade. Norma Jean also received two Grammy nominations during her career, and was a Grand Ole Opry member for many years.

Emerging country singer Aishling Rafferty told David Hennessy about sharing the stage with Robert Mizzell, how her career started with the Cowboys and Heroes singing competition, her passion for charity and why singing at a nursing home gives her the ‘buzz of being onstage’.

Having already shared the stage with Robert Mizzell and with her recent videos going down a storm with an international audience, emerging Tipperary singer singer Aishling Rafferty is proving herself to very much be a country star of the very near future.

Although she only turns 19 this month, the singer from Knockshegowna in Tipperary has already announced herself on the scene with tracks like Home to Donegal, Except for Mondays, New Moon Over my Shoulder and her latest offering, God’s Plan.

2020 was shaping up to be a big year for Aishling. It was just in January that her debut album My Journey was released. It was also supposed to be the year she sat her Leaving Cert. However, she hasn’t let the crisis stop her.

Aishling told The Irish World she still can’t believe the great things that have happened for her career: “To be honest, I can’t really believe it. I have to pinch myself to think of all the views I’m getting or the likes and shares on Facebook. I’m an 18-year-old girl from Tipperary and I’m getting attention from England, Australia, New Zealand, everywhere.

“I’m absolutely thrilled. I’m loving every second of it. I just can’t wait for my journey to stay going and see where it brings me.”

Aishling’s big break came last year when she made the final 12 out of the vast number of entries for the singing competition, Cowboys and Heroes. “That’s where it all started for me. That’s where everything really kicked off. It was a great platform for me, the best decision I ever made.

“I came home from school one day and I said to Daddy, ‘Have you got your phone there? Take a video of me singing this song, I want to hear what I sound like’. Of course, I didn’t tell him what it was for. Then a few weeks later, I got a phone call saying that I was actually going to be singing at Cowboys and Heroes. He said, ‘What did you do with the video I took?’ I said, ‘I sent it onto them’. And he couldn’t believe it but we were both absolutely thrilled. I really loved Cowboys and Heroes, that’s where everything kickstarted for me.”

Aishling is managed by her father John Rafferty who was playing music in Aishling’s very first memory.

“I’ve been surrounded by music all my life. My first memory is of me and my brothers and sisters sitting around the fire and my dad playing the guitar. How Much is that Doggie in the Window? was the song so it’s a very funny memory for me to have. We always had music.

“Country was always the one that we had in our house and for some reason, I always found myself coming back to country music. I think that’s because country music really tells a story and it’s very personal. I feel like everyone can relate to it and connect. There’s something relatable in every song for somebody.

“There’s such a young crowd as well with lots of young people in Ireland jiving and young singers coming along. Every day you can discover a new country music singer.

“There’s all sorts of ages. If you walked into a dance hall now to see Jimmy Buckley or Robert Mizzell, you would see 15, 16-year-olds all the way up to 80. They’re all dancing and everybody’s mixing. It’s great to see the young people and older people mixing as well. Sometimes older people might have a bad perception of younger people but when you go to these dances you really see how much they mix when you see people dancing together.”

Speaking of the Irish-based American country singer Robert Mizzell, what was it like for Aishling to be onstage with him? “Absolutely brilliant. Robert is a very good friend of mine and he’s been very good to me as well with my musical career. He was the first country star that I ever sang with so I owe a lot to him as well. That was one of the best moments of my life so far and there were more plans for Robert and myself but coronavirus kind of put a spanner in the works. We’re definitely going to get together again in the future.”

Aishling has also done admirable work for charity as she travelled to Romania two years ago to do voluntary work.

“I went to Romania to build houses for under-privileged people and we were also working in an orphanage. It was absolutely brilliant to get an insight into how other peoples’ lives are everyday, how fortunate some people can be and how unfortunate other people can be. It really, really opened my eyes and I would absolutely love to go back there again some time in the future.”

This is far from her only charitable endeavour as proceeds from her album went to the Irish Hospice Foundation. Also last year, she received the Garda National Youth Award in recognition of her contribution to the community, including the raising of €3,500 for the Irish Cancer Society, caring for her elderly neighbours, and volunteering in Lourdes as an assistant for the sick and elderly.

“I feel like if you can help someone, it’s going to come back to you and if you can spare your time for somebody else, it’s always going to come back to you in a good way. I feel if anyone can help anyone, even just put a smile on someone’s face, that’s great,” she says.

“I go to nursing homes most Fridays to sing songs for them for maybe an hour or two. They absolutely just love it and I love it as well. It gives me the buzz of being onstage. It’s so good for me, it gives me a break and it’s so good for your mental health. I just go down to see how happy it makes them. They look forward to it every Friday and so do I. We have a great party in there.

“They absolutely love it and they do be up dancing and swinging each other around the dance floor and just to see a smile on their faces and to know that you can make them happy for an hour, it’s very good and it gives me a very good sense of happiness as well to know that I’m after making their day a small bit better.”

Although some of them may have dementia or other issues, Aishling sees the nursing home residents come to life when they hear the music they know.

“When I sing all the old songs, they all sing along with me. They know every single word and it really brings them back to their youth. They do be always telling me about when they used to go dancing back in the dance halls in their days. Sometimes I do be listening to them and I think, ‘Jesus, I’d have loved to have been around that time’. The stories they tell me- some of them I couldn’t repeat- It sounds like they had brilliant craic. Telling me about Big Tom and Susan McCann and the whole lot of them so it really brings them back.”

Aishling was giving her time to good causes right up to lockdown being declared, taking part in Wish You Were Here, a fundraiser for suicide bereavement service Living Links in March just before live music was taken off the agenda altogether.

Aishling can’t wait to return to live performances: “I had so many plans for after my Leaving Cert. I had so many gigs. I had so much to look forward to. It’s all gone now, it’s all been postponed so it can all go ahead next year. I suppose that gives me more to look forward to and it gives me more time to learn as well and record new songs and get more videos for everybody as well.”

God’s Plan is out now.