Falling Slowly

Glen Hansard had already established his name and reputation as one of Ireland’s leading indie songsmiths with The Frames, who inspired a near-fanatical level of devotion among their growing legion of fans. But Glen had begun to spread his wings with the release of an album, The Swell Season (2006), in partnership with Markéta Irglová. Three of the songs from that record featured in the John Carney-directed indie meisterwerk (and critics’ favourite) Once. Among those three, ‘Falling Slowly’, written by Glen and Markéta, was truly outstanding. And so it proved. The song was nominated for an Oscar in 2008, and there was joy unconfined in Ireland when Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová were announced as winners of the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Twenty-five years on,‘Falling Slowly’ remains one of Ireland’s best known and best loved songs.

The Story Behind The Song

Having starred as one of the young soul rebels in Alan Parker’s much garlanded 1991 film, The Commitments, it wasn’t until 2007 that Glen Hansard was tempted back onto the big screen by writer-director John Carney, who wanted him to star in his new low-budget film, Once.

Hansard had spent the intervening years fronting The Frames, with whom Carney had been bassist for a spell in the early ‘90s – the band's six albums up to that point had gained them almost mythic status in Ireland.

He’d also released an eponymous album in 2006 with Czech singer Markéta Irglová under the guise of The Swell Season. Carney was so taken with the record that he wanted to incorporate both it and Glen and Markéta’s emerging real life romance into his script.

It was therefore very much a case of art imitating life when Glen got to play Guy, a Dublin busker who meets Markéta’s flower seller character, Girl, whilst playing his songs, busking on Grafton Street – where Hansard himself had previously rubbed shoulders and traded songs with the likes of Hothouse Flowers, Damien Rice and Rodrigo y Gabriela.

Glen Hansard, photographed in 2020 for Hot Press, by Miguel Ruiz

One of the first songs to be woven into the storyline was ‘Falling Slowly’, which had previously been recorded by The Frames (on their seventh studio album The Cost) but had subsequently been re-imagined in a stripped-down version for The Swell Season album.

In Once, it is performed in the former Walton's Music Store on South Great George’s Street, in the centre of Dublin, with Glen on acoustic guitar and Markéta at the piano. Its delicate melody, poetic verses and joyous merging of their voices struck an immediate chord with Irish cinema-goers when the film was released on 23 March, 2007. Fifteen years later, lines like “Take this sinking boat and point it home/ We’ve still got time/ Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice/ You’ll make it now” retain the power to melt even the coldest of hearts.

“Playing a guy who writes songs and busks on Grafton Street in Dublin and falls in love with Markéta Irglová wasn’t very difficult for me,” Glen has acknowledged. “There was very little acting going on. John was clued-in to the fact that there was something between us, and kept talking about the chemistry. He wouldn’t let us watch the rushes. He said, ‘There’s something going on, I don’t want you knowing what it is. I want you to be natural’.”

The film was made on a miniscule budget of €180,000, which involved a huge amount of improvisation and impressive cinematic sleight of hand. Carney had convinced himself not to dream too big, hoping for a few international film festival screenings before Once went to DVD. But things panned out very differently indeed. Cinema-goers loved the film’s gentleness and authenticity, and it scooped the Audience Award at both the Sundance Festival and the Dublin Film Festival. Its initial distribution in Ireland was followed two months later by a limited release in the US. After the first weekend, however, expectations had changed dramatically: it immediately topped the indieWIRE box office charts, and the word of mouth was stunningly positive. The crowds kept on coming, with box office receipts climbing eventually to over $23million. Bob Dylan and Steven Spielberg were among those who vociferously sang its praises.

Glen Hansard and Interference at The Sugar Club by Miguel Ruiz

The magic was only starting. ‘Falling Slowly’ went on to win the Critics Choice Award for Best Song; and then it lifted the Academy Award for Best Original Song, an accolade which propelled its parent album into the American Top 40 for the first time. The single, ‘Falling Slowly’, meanwhile, went to No.2 in Ireland.

Glen has said – with a grin – that an even greater honour than the Oscar was being asked to perform ‘Falling Slowly’ with Markéta in the In The Name Of The Grandfather episode of The Simpsons.

Markéta and Glen’s romantic relationship ended naturally, but they remain close friends and will be reuniting musically in 2022 for shows. Once, meanwhile, has subsequently been turned into a Broadway-conquering musical, which won eight Tony Awards – including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Direction of a Musical and Best Actor in a Musical – and toured widely. ‘Falling Slowly’ has since become a standard, sung by everyone from Josh Groban, Celtic Thunder and Kimberley Walsh of Girls Aloud, to Brazilian bossa nova duo Eliza Lacerda and Flávio Mendes, Il Divo, and K-popper Park Chanyeol. It has become a favourite on shows like American Idol and The Voice. It is sung by the characters Benoit (Kevin Dias) and Mindy (Ashley Park) in Season 2 of Emily in Paris. And Glen Hansard has been joined onstage for an extraordinary version by Eddie Vedder, a fan iPhone recording of which has generated over a million views on YouTube. Meanwhile, the original video – a beautiful piece featuring scenes from the film as well as out-takes – has been viewed 12 million times.

All of which is proof, if any were needed, that there’s no theme quite as universal as love. And that it sometimes – just sometimes – does run smoothly...