Last month, North American journalists convened at the midtown Manhattan supper club Providence for the first glimpse of Sony BMG’s next hot breakout act, the Priests. We’re not talking heavy-metal Judas Priest aspirants here. The Priests are three actual practising priests from the Down and Connor diocese in Northern Ireland.
Radio producers, magazine editors and bookers from The View and Live with Regis and Kelly nibbled sushi and mini-burgers awaiting the arrival of the ecclesiastical crooners who’ve been singing together for three decades. Buzz has been building since April when the trio signed what was hyped in the press as a £2.6-million recording contract on the steps of London’s Westminster Cathedral. The publicity machine is now at full throttle on the eve of the mid-November release of their first CD, The Priests, timed for Christmas sales.
Nick Raphael, managing director of the Sony BMG-owned Epic label in the U.K., takes to the small stage to introduce them. “This isn’t a religious project but one of passion,” he tells the crowd. “These guys are singing some of the greatest pop songs of all time.”
That he’s talking Passion with a capital “p” becomes evident with the arrival of Father Eugene O’Hagan, 49, his younger brother Father Martin O’Hagan, 45, and Father David Delargy, also 45. Outfitted in trim black suits, punctuated with the flash of white clerical collars, they perform a sampling from the CD—liturgical chestnuts such as Schubert’s Ave Maria, César Franck’s Panis Angelicus and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu. On stage, they’re serene: when one takes the lead, the other two gaze beatifically into the near distance. Their harmonizing is flawless, the delivery exultant. The crowd, a group jaded by the usual press junket grind, is in thrall. Following the finale, a traditional Irish blessing, everyone leaps up, amid cries of “Bravo.”
The arrival of three middle-aged priests as pop stars definitely signals a culture in need of some sort of salvation. Or maybe they’re simply a much-needed correction in a music market weary of R. Kelly bad-boy antics and Amy Winehouse meltdowns. Raphael says the Priests will chart unmapped territory. He first heard them while soliciting demo tapes for producer Mike Hedges, famed for his work with the Cure, U2 and Dido. Hedges, an Irish Catholic, had told Raphael it had been a lifetime desire to record a Latin mass. The priests were prodded to send in a tape by Van Morrison’s drummer, Liam Bradley, with whom they had performed. Raphael says he thought at first he was being pranked: “I was sure it was the Three Tenors.”
Hope is high that the O’Hagan brothers, both tenors, and Delargy, who sings bass and baritone, will join a long tradition of holy hitmakers, including Belgian nun Jeannine Deckers, who became famous in the 1960s as the Singing Nun, the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, who’ve sold millions of copies of their Gregorian chants, and Cesare Bonizzi, the 62-year-old Franciscan monk inspired by Metallica and Megadeth. More recently, an appetite for liturgical tunes is reflected in the popularity of the Simon Cowell-discovery Angelis, whose debut album in 2006 sold more than 350,000 copies.
PBS, which is airing The Priests in Concert at Armagh Cathedral later this month, is among the new faithful. A PBS producer in the crowd at Providence says the Priests are a natural fit for the channel’s older audience, a demographic more likely to buy a CD than to download it. “Do you know how many Catholics there are in the U.S.?” he asks. That number is even higher internationally, somewhere around 1.1 billion. Raphael says the label is targeting the classical listener who buys Il Divo. Catholics, particularly Irish Catholics, are another marketing focus.
Part of the Priests’ appeal is their backstory, one they tell affably at Sony’s New York headquarters the morning after their performance. Their emerging celebrity status clearly bemuses them. As Father David Delargy steps off the elevator onto the 14th floor, he checks out huge photographs of the label’s big names, among them Usher, Chris Brown and T-Pain. “Hmm, our image is very staid,” he jokes. “What we need is some bling.”
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