Irish Brian makes Radio 1 debut

He stole the hearts and gained the votes of Lincoln students to win the presidential elections – and now his infamous Royals parody has been broadcast to the nation by Scott Mills on BBC Radio One.

He certainly got Scott Mills’ vote!

During election week, The Tab brought you a selection of our favourite cringy campaign videos, including Brian “Irish Brian” Alcorn’s parody of Lorde’s Grammy award winning song Royals.

And now our green-loving president and all round BNOC (Big Name On Campus) has extended his fame outside of Lincoln – after a cameo on Scott Mills’ show on Friday.

It’s not the first video of its kind, and it wasn’t the last – but on the Scott Mills show this Friday three students directed Scott’s attention to Brian’s video, which was then played on the air.

Scott drew particular focus to the harmonies in the chorus, describing them as “something else”.

Here’s the (legendary) video, in case you needed a quick refresher:

The School of Media’s Youtube page quickly picked up on the broadcast, and you can hear the extract in the clip below.

We spoke to Brian about his three minutes of fame, and he told us that he was “blown away” that Radio One had heard about his campaign video.

Brian told The Tab:

“It’s a bit awkward because I’m not really much of a singer. I didn’t expect the video to gain such popularity during the elections, but was glad when it finished so that hopefully the video would be forgotten about, but now it’s been broadcast nationally!

“The original song is really catchy, which is why I chose to use it as a parody, but now people tell me they are singing along to the words of my version rather than the original!

“I had just over 4,000 views by the end of the campaign week, which is staggering considering the video from the previous election campaign has been up for a year and only had 1,500 views at the same time.

“Now, with Radio One having played my song, the video is just short of 10,000 views – it’s just crazy! I only wish I had that publicity during the campaign week!”

A lot of people now know, and love, Irish Brian

Brian also thanked Alex O’Brien, an Audio Production student, for mixing the track, as well as Matt Gambell and his team who produced the video, and said “their skills absolutely made the song a success”.

Brian posted a vlog update on his own Youtube page following the Radio One coverage, and you can see it below: