RTÉ Choice Music Prize – Classic Irish Album Announced
RTÉ Choice Music Prize
In association with IMRO and IRMA
Classic Irish Album
And the winning album is…
Achtung Baby by U2
Live Event, Vicar St Thursday 7th March (Sold-Out)
The RTÉ Choice Music Prize Classic Irish Album, in association with IMRO & IRMA, has just been announced on RTÉ Gold by Will Leahy. The winning album is: Achtung Baby by U2.
The judges for the prize are Sinead Crowley (Coimisiún na Meán), Michael Kealy (RTÉ TV), Maeve Quigley (Irish Daily Mail) and Will Leahy (RTÉ Gold) with Paul Russell (2FM) as the chairperson.
The panel chose Achtung Baby by U2 as their Classic Irish Album for the RTÉ Choice Music Prize and explain further: “The panel is unanimous that you cannot deny the album’s authenticity and significant cultural impact as one classic song after another unfolds over 55 minutes. To this day, it still resonates as a collection of songs that capture the spirit of change at both a personal as well as a societal level, when the Berlin wall came tumbling down, and Ireland sensed a change in the air. The ground-breaking Zoo TV Tour in support of the album helped to re-invent the stadium show and now over 30 years later, Achtung Baby is at the heart of the globally acclaimed ‘U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere’, a string of ground-breaking performances which launched Sphere, the cutting-edge new venue in Las Vegas”.
Thirty years ago, Bono described Achtung Baby as “the sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree” while Jon Pareles of the New York Times wrote that “stripped-down and defying its old formulas, U2 has given itself a fighting chance for the 1990’s”. The album won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance and became one of the most significant records of the nineties and of U2’s career. Recorded over six months at Hansa Studio in Berlin and Windmill Lane in Dublin, Achtung Baby is U2’s seventh studio album. Produced by long time U2 collaborators, Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno with Steve Lillywhite, Achtung Baby was engineered by Flood and released on 18th November 1991. Led by The Fly, four other singles followed: Mysterious Ways, One, Even Better Than The Real Thing and Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses.
“Achtung Baby is rightly known as one of rock’s greatest reinventions because it was so complete.” – Pitchfork
The inaugural winning Classic Irish Album last year was I Do Not Have What I Haven’t Got by the late great Sinéad O’ Connor.
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The winning Irish Album of the Year 2023 will be announced at the RTÉ Choice Music Prize live event in Vicar St 7th March, and will be broadcast on RTÉ 2FM in a special four-hour extended show with Beta Da Silva from 7-11pm. A special TV show will be broadcast on Thursday 14th March at 22.30 on RTÉ2.
The Classic Irish Album prize will be presented along with Irish Artist of the Year and Irish Breakthrough Artist that night.
The Irish Song of the Year 2023 will be announced by Tracy Clifford on her 2FM show on the day of the live event and presented to the winner in Vicar St that night. Tracy will also host the live event.
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The 19th annual RTÉ Choice Music Prize will once again celebrate the best in Irish recorded music. The Prize has become one of the music-industry highlights of the year since its inception in 2005. The Irish Album of the Year award is chosen from a shortlist of ten albums by a panel of eleven Irish music media professionals and industry experts.
The winning Album of the Year act will receive €10,000, a prize fund which has been provided by The Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) and The Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA). All shortlisted acts will receive a specially commissioned award.
RAAP, Culture Ireland, First Music Contact, Minding Creative Minds, Cultural & Creative Industries Skillnet and Coimisiún na Meán are also official project partners of the RTÉ Choice Music Prize.
Through its funding of the Music From Ireland programme, Culture Ireland’s support of the RTÉ Choice Music Prize will be directed towards shortlisted artists, as well as assisting the RTÉ Choice Music Prize “Conversations”.
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