Flynn lined up as main support at Lewis Capaldi gig in Malta

If his music career had not begun to take off, Mullingar singer/songwriter Flynn reckons he might still be working in the IKEA store at Bristol.

As it happens though, that’s long behind him and things are going quite nicely: Flynn – whose first name is Darren – is lined up as main support act to Lewis Capaldi at a concert in Malta this summer; he has his first headline gig next month in Dublin – and just out is his staggeringly good new single Elephant.

As well as performing, he writes for numerous other artists, and not long before Covid, his career took a deserved upward turn – and led to him getting signed by Sony – after the success of ‘Recognition’, a collaboration with world-renowned Belgian DJ Lost Frequencies, went platinum.

“I wrote the song and [Lost Frequencies] put me on the record as well as a featured artist. The record went platinum and I got to play all around the world. And from there, I think that’s when heads started to turn and people started to take me seriously as a songwriter and as an artist, and then Sony offered me a contract a couple of months after release, and so did BMG.

“So that was it. And since then I’ve kind of been working side by side with the Sony team and the BMG team. So it’s been it’s been really good.”

Flynn has two other songs in the pipeline with Lost Frequencies; he has done a song with the US rock band Papa Roach and he has some exciting projects coming up this year – one with a really big name artist – but he’s not free to share the details yet. Then he has his own EP coming out as well.

Sony handles Flynn as a performer and BMG as a songwriter – and his output as a songwriter is prodigious: anything up to 100 songs a year: “My typical day to day would be going into a studio in London or Berlin – or LA sometimes as well, although I haven’t been there in a while – but usually I go between Berlin, LA and London, and I’ll write with other co-writers or songwriters and producers.

“That’s my day to day, like I’ll do that Monday to Friday. That’s what goes on. This is what a lot of people don’t know… the songs you hear on the radio come from someone songwriting in a studio, somewhere in the world, and then maybe six months down the line that song happens to fall through the net, go through all the stages that a song goes through to actually make the cut and then get on get on the radio and get on the airwaves. And then that’s it. That’s when the consumer is interested. It’s really interesting how that works.”

Mullingar got to see at first hand the performer Flynn has become when he sang on the Saturday at the Lakeland Sessions, part of the Westmeath Bachelor festival. Unfortunately, the weather was grim: “I think you kind of have to block out the weather conditions when you’re when you’re doing these performances and doing these things,” he says stoically. “But no, it was a great festival. I think it was it was run very well. Just the fact that people actually come out and braved that weather kind of shocked me.

“I remember waking up and I was like, ‘Oh, this is gonna be a bad turnout’. But there was lots of people that come out to support me, and I’m always very, very happy to see that, and for me, as an artist, it’s like that’s what kind of keeps us going. It’s just seeing people in the crowd singing along to the tunes. That’s kind of what makes it: that’s the payoff for all the hard work that we put in behind the scenes. So that was amazing.”

Home

While Pettitswood is where Flynn spent his earliest years, his mother, teacher Yvonne Molloy, and her husband James Farrell and Flynn’s sister Hazel now live in Clonard, where James operates Farrell Fuels – but ‘home’ for Flynn these days is London – it’s also where his father, Leitrim native James Flynn lives.

Before leaving Mullingar for the UK, Flynn had already decided he wanted to make a career out of music. Always a singer, he only took up the guitar after his father bought him one for his 16th birthday. His mother recognised that he had a talent and encouraged him; whenever he had friends round, he enjoyed taking out the guitar and singing. Eventually, it was to be the reaction to his performance in a school talent show that first allowed Flynn to begin to believe he might have what was needed for a career in performance.

“I was in Transition Year in CBS, and the school was having its first ever talent show and I was kind of put forward – my name was put forward – by a few friends. They were just like: ‘sure go up and do it for the craic, and see how you get on’.

“I always sang but I just didn’t have the courage to sing in front of people and to take it seriously and say this is what I wanted to do. But when I did this talent show, I came joint first, and I think for me that was just huge.

“I wouldn’t say I found school hard, but I just didn’t really know where I was going to go after school. Like I didn’t know whether I was going to go to university or whether I was going to you know work in the family business. I just didn’t know where my road was gonna go.”

After the talent show, there was no doubt in Flynn’s mind: he wanted a career in music.

Specifically, he wanted to write what he would perform: “I was always very into creative writing. English would have been my strongest subject in school. That’s one exam that I never had any problems with. I always had good grades in English and… I don’t know: I just think I put two and two together and now, it’s my full-time job.”

Straight after school (where, incidentally, he was in the same class as Niall Horan), he headed to music college in Bristol – hence the job in IKEA.

“I did a lot of jobs,” he laughs.

“I’ve worked in sales. I’ve worked in IKEA. I sold kitchens, I’ve done manual work. I’ve worked in offices – I’ve had pretty much every job you can imagine.”

He actually quite enjoyed sales roles. “So anything to do with, like, sales – or pitching an idea to someone – that was something that I was that I was good at; maybe not interested in but I was definitely I suppose quite good at.”