Aaron Rowe 2026

When he speaks his eyes glisten, but when he sings, they close as his head lulls onto his shoulder andtilts back. For Aaron, singing and playing guitar is not a choice, it's an extension of himself - he has to do it. You can tell as soon as he begins it offers him not only freedom, but focus.

It wasn't always that easy, though. When he first started playing music as a teenager, Aaron tried to keep it a secret. "Where I'm from, you can't show people you're soft, so playing music and singing was just off the cards.

" However, it got tricky once he started walking around the area with a guitar strapped to his back. One day he was finally pulled over by "a few of the lads, they asked me 'you playing music then, Aaron? Play us a song;" And when he humbly refused?

"Play us a fucking song". Reluctantly, he sang to them, sitting on a brick wall behind those tightly closed eyes. When he opened them, instead of laughter he was met with acceptance.

"All they said was, 'That was class,' It was a really nice moment for me, and after that exact day I was like fuck this, this is what I want to do, and this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life". He decided then and there that he was going to be a musician. Aaron grew up in Monkstown Farm, Dun Laoghaire on the southside of Dublin with his three sisters and single mother.

"It was rough. Do you know what I mean? But rough in the sense that it was tough seeing her go through it.

We never went without a hot meal but she went without everything. " Because his mum wanted him and his sister to be educated in the irish language, he ended up going to a different school to the boys in his area. He quickly began "living a doublelife", softening his accent and picking up middle class manners.

"When I was in primary school I just wanted to fit in, but when I got to Secondary I found that my strength was that I wasn't like the kids around me, and so I played up to it a lot. Once, someone in school called me a scumbag and I said 'grand, now i'm going to give you full scumbag! '" So far, the story of Aaron Rowe looks like what fate feels like: paths crossing and stars aligning.

Almost exactly a year ago, Aaron was singing covers at his regular Saturday gig in The Dame Tavern when one of his future managers would walk in and discover him playing. A few weeks later, Lewis Capaldi would also stumble into Aaron's usual Sunday sessions at Cassidy's on a stag do. Like fate, a few weeks after that, he would bump into Lewis again whilst performing at an open mic in Nashville, where Lewis introduced him to his best friend, now Aaron's manager, who just so happened to have listened to his demos that very morning.

Far from an overnight success, after nearly thirteen years of gigging five days a week, his moment finally came. Call it fate, call it what you will, a good story is the least you can expectfrom a generational voice like Aaron. His own life experiences leading up to this moment means there is an unmatched maturity and vulnerability to Aaron's songwriting, Somehow, he can balance the heart wrenching with the heartwarming, all the while holding open the door to us into his very personal world.

This dichotomy he often explores on upcoming releases lies not only in its sometimes frank, sometimes devastating lyrics, but crucially in the old soul of Aaron's voice, where he wears his influences on his sleeve; from Sam Cooke to Nina Simone to Paulo Nutini. What separates Aaron from his contemporaries is the everlasting quality to his songs - it's as though his voice trips and falls seamlessly through a melody, forever wounding its listener. You can see t