![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ronan-keating.jpg\")
Ronan Keating has shared a reminder of what the number one song was the last time Ireland saw a solar eclipse. Pic: Brett Cove\/Shutterstock<\/p>\nRonan Keating has shared a reminder of what the number one song was the last time Ireland saw a solar eclipse.<\/p>\n
The country \u2014 and the continent of Europe as a whole \u2014 are set to see a full solar eclipse for the first time in nearly three decades, with eclipse sunglasses selling out everywhere as we prepare to see the moon cover most of the sun on Wednesday evening (August 12).<\/p>\n
And while this isn\u2019t a total eclipse in Ireland and England \u2014 that honour will fall on Spain and Portugal \u2014 this is the closest we\u2019ll get to a total solar eclipse since 1999.<\/p>\n
Ronan Keating has shared a reminder of what the number one song was the last time Ireland saw a solar eclipse. Pic: Brett Cove\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
While the world that prepared for the dawn of a new millennium seems so incredibly different from what we\u2019re experiencing nowadays, some might believe that the music was better or worse \u2014 case in point, what the number one song was in Ireland and the UK the last time we saw a solar eclipse.<\/p>\n
While Notting Hill was released to critical acclaim as a movie, the soundtrack might be viewed as a product of its time; it did, however, give us Ronan Keating\u2019s<\/a> solo career, which launched with his cover of the song When You Say Nothing At All.<\/p>\n The song shot to number 1 in Ireland and the UK, and sure enough, was the number one song when Europe enjoyed the latest solar eclipse \u2014 with Ronan reminding us all of his feat ahead of today\u2019s eclipse.<\/p>\n Sharing a clip of the song\u2019s music video alongside clips of the eclipse, with Ronan captioning the video: \u2018Guess which song was number 1 during the 1999 Solar Eclipse?\u2019<\/p>\n The video itself read: \u2018it\u2019s like 1999 again, there\u2019s a solar eclipse and you\u2019re listening to Ronan Keating,\u2019 with people reminiscing on the song and their memories of it.<\/p>\n \u2018I remember that day watching \u201cNotting Hill\u201d at the cinema with my brother and watching the eclipse of the sun afterwards,\u2019 one commented, while another wrote: \u2018The number one the day my son was born!\u2019<\/p>\n As for this evening\u2019s eclipse<\/a>, said to be the deepest in the country until 2090, the west and south are set to have 98% of the sun covered, while in the east and north coverage is expected around 94%.<\/p>\n Some areas of the world are expected to see a total eclipse, including parts of Spain, Greenland and Iceland.<\/p>\n Observatories at Armagh, Dunsink in Dublin, and Blackrock Castle in Cork have organised viewing events, and public events have been planned at Maynooth University in Co Kildare, Queen\u2019s University Belfast and at the\u00a0Visitor Centre, Phoenix Park<\/a>\u00a0in Dublin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ronan Keating has shared a reminder of what the number one song was the last time Ireland saw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-591193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Solar-Eclipse-4.jpg\")
A solar eclipse is set to cover 98% of the sun across Ireland. Pic: Getty Images<\/p>\n