Watch: Donegal singer-songwriter Seán Feeny releases new single from debut album

Donegal singer-songwriter Seán Feeny has released the fourth single from his debut album Galactic Tides.

Tír Mór is stirring folk-pop meditation on emigration, memory and the quiet heartbreak of leaving home. 

The song’s title, the Irish phrase for ‘big land’ or mainland, was inspired by a moment on Árainn Mhór, off the coast of Donegal. 

While visiting his wife’s native island some years ago, Feeny heard someone preparing to leave for work refer to the mainland simply as “the Tír Mór”. 

The everyday use of the Irish phrase struck him deeply. That moment became a metaphor. 

For generations of islanders, and indeed for countless Irish families, the Tír Mór has represented opportunity, necessity, and separation. It is the place people are pulled toward for work, often at the cost of distance from home, heritage and community. 

Tír Mór captures that tension with evocative imagery of tides, boats, letters never answered, and the ache of inherited departure: “And just like our fathers did before, We tied the boats ashore, And we left our heavy footprints in the sand…” 

The song’s chorus is both a lament and a confrontation: “I hear you calling me, Tír Mór, I hear you haunting me, Tír Mór.” 

Building on the thematic arc established across Galactic Tides, a record exploring migration, ancestry and belonging, Tír Mór continues Feeny’s deeply personal yet universal storytelling. 

Where previous singles such as 1969 reflected on family resilience and Western Roads honoured the diaspora experience, this latest release turns its focus to the emotional gravity that pulls people away from home in the first place. 

Seán said: “I remember hearing someone say they were heading to the Tír Mór for work, and it stopped me. It wasn’t just a place, it felt like a force. For so many people, especially on islands, the mainland becomes something bigger than geography. It represents opportunity, but also absence. This song is about that pull, the way history repeats itself, the way sons and daughters follow the same tides as their fathers before them.”

Musically, Tír Mór blends Feeny’s warm folk storytelling with cinematic swells and atmospheric textures, echoing the emotional rhythm of the sea itself. 

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The rolling imagery of oars, roaring waves and crumbling walls mirrors the internal struggle between staying and leaving, between resistance and resignation. 

For the video, Feeny once again collaborated with long-time creative partner, Donegal filmmaker Charlie Joe Doherty, continuing the visual journey that has accompanied previous singles from the album. The single was also produced by Feeny's friend and long-time collaborator, Orri McBrearty, and features Laura McFadden on cello. 

This time, the pair travelled to Toraigh (Tory Island), another rugged and historic island off the coast of Donegal, to capture the spirit of ‘Tír Mór’. Shot against vast Atlantic skies, weathered stone and restless seas, the video mirrors the song’s themes of isolation, endurance and ancestral echo. The landscape becomes a character in its own right, beautiful yet unforgiving, grounding yet transient. 

Seán said: “We wanted to capture the sense of standing on the edge of something, physically and emotionally. Toraigh has that feeling. It’s powerful and exposed. It reminds you how small you are, but also how connected you are to those who stood there before you.” 

Across Galactic Tides, Feeny explores invisible forces, grief, love, ancestry, memory, that shape lives across oceans and generations . Tír Mór sits at the emotional core of that journey, asking difficult questions. 

With lines like “Will our sons and daughters get to soon return”, the song bridges past and future, holding space for both longing and hope. 

Rooted in Donegal but resonating far beyond it, Tír Mór speaks to anyone who has ever left home for work, for necessity, or for something they could not name, and to those who felt the echo long after they arrived. 

With its sweeping melody, ancestral undercurrent and striking island visuals, Tír Mór further establishes Seán Feeny as a songwriter unafraid to confront history while searching for belonging in the present. 

To listen, watch and follow Seán Feeny, visit: www.seanfeeny.com.