The RTÉ Choice Music Prize Classic Irish Album for 2026, in association with IMRO & IRMA, has just been announced on RTÉ Gold by Will Leahy.
The winning album is The Táin by Horslips.
A concept album centred on Irish mythology, The Táin was the band’s second full-length offering and was released on their own label in Ireland in 1973 as well as RCA in the UK and Atco in the US.
Dearg Doom was arguably the most popular track on the album, and remains one of Horslips’ most iconic song. The track’s main guitar riff was incorporated into Put ‘Em Under Pressure, the anthem of Ireland’s Italia ‘90 campaign, reintroducing the song to a younger audience.
The classic Horslips line-up features on The Tain: Jim Lockhart, Eamon Carr, Barry Devlin, Charles O’ Connor and the late Johnny Fean. Some of the band members will attend this year’s Choice Music Prize ceremony at Vicar St, Dublin on March 5th to collect their award.
In a statement, the band said: “We can’t believe it, really. We knew at the time that The Táin was a different kind of album. And we could see that Dearg Doom had a great riff going on. We just didn’t think that it would sustain in the way it has. Both Italia 90 and (the movie) Saipan have served to keep the album and the single surfacing but even without that, there seems to be an inbuilt determination to survive in both. 50 years is a good innings!”
The judges for this year’s prize are Dave Fanning (Radio and TV Broadcaster), Caroline Henry (Artist Management), Stevo Berube (Artist Management & Music Publicist), with Paul Russell (Radio producer, formerly RTÉ 2FM) as the chairperson.
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On their choice of The Tain, the panel said: “Horslips lasted 10 years – 1970 to 1980. Their impact was immense. They literally changed the course of music in Ireland in the seventies, not just because they fused traditional Irish music with rock and in so doing inspired many local and international acts or that they released 10 albums in that 10-year period leaving a legacy much bigger than that of the defining band of the so-called Celtic Rock genre.
No…maybe the main reason is that they brought their unique brand of music to every barn, every dancehall, every hotel, every disco, every church-hall again and again and again.
They made an instant impact with their debut release but the record that stands out is the follow-up, an ambitious concept album telling the story of the Táin Bó Cúailnge (the cattle raid of Cooley), the legend of early Irish literature dealing with the war between Connacht and Ulster over a prize bull. Fusing traditional music as an influence to develop a new idiom of rock’n’roll that had real relevance to the band’s own experience, one result was that by paying respectful homage to the music of our past and rocking it up to a new, younger, audience, a whole new world of music was opened up.
And, of course, 20 years later the riff from the album’s most famous track brought a whole new audience on board, the soundtrack to Ireland’s first ever world cup finals campaign”.
Previous winners of the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Classic Irish Album prize include I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got by Sinéad O’ Connor, Achtung Baby by U2 and Watermark by Enya.
The overall winner of the Choice Music Prize will be announced at a special event at Vicar St, Dublin on March 5th, with an exclusive live RTÉ 2FM broadcast, featuring performances from shortlisted acts – tickets are now on sale.