Meath version of 'Royals' an online hit
The New Zealand singer Lorde won Grammy recognition for her Pure Heroine album track ‘Royals’, but a version of the song of the year 2013 has become a Youtube hit this week courtesy of some real Royals, as Meath prepares for a Leinster Final showdown against old rivals, Dublin.
Written by Davy O’Neill of Kilbride as a parody of the Lorde hit, with a video directed by Trevor O’Neill of Ashbourne, the song has now over 60,000 hits since going online over a week ago.
GiddyupSkits was started by Trevor O’Neill five years ago, focusing mostly on comedy skits and parodies, with ‘The Royal County’ being one of its biggest hits so far.
Davy said that he didn’t expect it to be such a massive hit: “I uploaded it onto Youtube and then went to training and after I came out my phone was hopping ... I couldn’t believe it, Trevor said it was going to be big.”
In no time the song was featured on Newstalk’s ‘Off the Ball’ programme as well as sports website, thescore.ie.
“I had said to Trevor if Meath get into the Leinster Final I’m going to write a song” said Davy. “It was recorded in Trevor’s shed in two hours”.
They planned the video to be a bit more star-studded in the beginning.
“We were trying to get Paddy O’Rourke and Seán Boylan in the video but they were busy, so we used the statue of Sean Boylan in Dunboyne instead ... we were pushed for time, we had a lot more we wanted to put in.”
Towns and villages across south Meath, as well as GAA grounds, were used as locations, while Trevor’s brothers and sisters and friends acted as the cast and chorus in their Meath - and one Dublin - jersey!
Davy, who doesn’t play Gaelic football himself but plays soccer with Ratoath Harps, says that he has a musical background in his family and plays guitar, and has been in a band, and obviously is a big Meath fan.
“We were hoping someone from Dublin would respond to the video ... but we do have another idea in the pipeline for the final.”
Davy and Trevor will continue to work on more content for their GiddyupSkits as well as Trevor’s webseries Dramatown which he hopes to pitch to RTÉ’s Storyland, which is most famous for producing ‘The Hardy Bucks Movie’.