Setting off on a new musical journey

For Shaun Fox, it was just another training session. He was in Mullingar, being put through his paces with the Westmeath under-16 footballers. Then everything changed.

"I was just running after a ball and I got a little push. Whatever way I landed on top of it, I broke my leg in two places," he recalled.

The then-15-year-old heard the sound of his leg breaking, and what immediately went through his mind was: "I can't be injured. I can't be missing sports. We have championship coming up. I need to be playing football."

But the injury, which required two surgeries, has since set him on a different path. Up until then Gaelic football and other sports had taken up most of his spare time, but during his recovery from the broken leg he discovered a previously hidden talent for singing and songwriting.

Now aged 17, the fifth year student in Athlone's Marist College released his debut single 'The Mistake' on online streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube in late November.

The song, recorded in Glasson's Lakeland Studios, has since been played over 8,000 times and been heard by people in 57 countries.

"Three people from South Korea have listened to my song," he smiles. "It's just amazing to think that three people from South Korea sat down and listened to Shaun Fox from Athlone! I think that's really cool.

"The feedback I've gotten from the song has been really good. My friends would tell me straight up, 'I didn't think it would be this good. For your first song I thought it would be kind of bad, and I'd have to like it anyway, but I actually do really like it!'"

Shaun is the son of Dermot and Mary Fox, and he has one older sister, Cathy Anne. He represented Westmeath at underage level in gaelic football from Under-13s to Under-16s, and also played hurling, golf, soccer and rugby while growing up.

While he always loved to sing in the shower, Shaun never sang in front of others until he was in Transition Year in school and, while recovering from the leg injury, decided to audition for the school musical, 'Rock of Ages'.

He was nervous going in to the audition but ended up getting one of the main roles in the show, that of Stacee Jaxx.

"My character was the bad guy in that musical. Aishling Fennell, who owns Attitude Dance, put me in the role and ever since then I just haven't wanted to get off the stage. I haven't wanted to stop singing."

His appearance in the musical initially came as a surprise, even to members of his own family.

"My Mam owns a speech and drama school but I would have stopped doing that when I was eight or nine. My sister danced and was a lead in her musical, and my Mam sang, but I never did.

"I was more (similar to) my Dad in terms of being interested in sports. When I got the role in the musical, my Dad was saying, 'and are you able to sing, Shaun?' He was really nervous that I wouldn't be able to sing because he thought I'd be like him, he doesn't have a singing bone in his body!"

As it turned out, Dermot was so impressed with his son's performance in the musical that he went to see it twice! The show was a sell-out over all three nights and, after its success, Shaun joined Aishling Fennell's Attitude Dance and Stage School, performing with the group in the All Ireland Variety Show competition last summer.

"(Taking part in the competition) helped mix my love of sports with performing. I liked to sing, but I missed the competitiveness of sports. When I went up there, we were competing against schools from Monaghan and Kildare and that really brought out the competitive side in me. I really wanted to win for everyone else and for all the hard work they'd been doing."

The path to writing and recording his own songs also developed last summer. "I had always been writing but I never really took it seriously and thought, 'I'm going to release this song'.

"But then in the summer I wrote 'The Mistake', and I thought, 'this is good' and I started messing around with backing tracks and stuff."

He asked some local musicians if there was a producer they could recommend, and he was directed to AIT lecurer Mike O'Dowd, of Lakeland Studios.

"Mike has been amazing. He took me under his wing, and we've created a few songs that I'm really happy with. I had an idea of what I wanted 'The Mistake' to sound like, but when Mike came in he took it to another level."

The song deals with relationship matters: "It's a very vulnerable song, a very open song, and especially when I'm still in school people would be asking you different bits about it, but I always knew that I wanted to release it for myself. I write songs to get stuff off my chest."

When asked about his musical influences, he replied: "I like Ed Sheeran. I think he's really talented and I like his songwriting ability and his production.

"Then there's an American rapper called NF who I really like because of the way he's able to open up in his lyrics. Each lyric is like a story and, even though I don't rap myself, I find that very good because it lets me connect me with his music, which is what I want to do as well with my own listeners."

He said people have told him his own music sounds like a mix between Lukas Graham and Ed Sheeran. "I don't know... those are two pretty big names to be throwing out!" he said.

Shaun has been able to resume playing football with his school and with his club, Athlone GAA Club, but when he was called to attend trials for the Westmeath under-17 team he decided not to go because he wanted to focus on his music.

Looking ahead, he would love to do some gigs and he has plans to release more songs online over the course of this year.

"The plan is for another release at the end of February, a completely different song that we haven't actually recorded yet. It's very different to 'The Mistake' - It's a lot more upbeat, a happier mood.

"So we'll see what reception we get with this next song, and see what kind of genre people prefer. And then the plan will be just to keep releasing songs in 2020, and try to have a successful year."

* You can find Shaun's single, 'The Mistake' on streaming services such as Apple Music, Spotify, and Deezer, and his Instagram page is at: shaunfox10