Thousands of mourners filled Dublin's streets to say a final goodbye to Glen Hansard, turning what could have been a standard state-adjacent send-off into an old-fashioned Irish gathering. The Oscar-winning songwriter didn't just write music for the charts. He lived right alongside the people who listened to it.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral hosted the public funeral service following a massive turnout at his wake at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham. Fans flew in from Chicago, the Netherlands, and all over Europe. They didn't just come to mourn a celebrity. They came to honor a man who started his career strumming a battered acoustic guitar on Grafton Street at age thirteen. Discover more on a similar subject: this related article.
Hansard’s sudden death at 56 from a motorcycle crash in west Dublin left the entire music world reeling. But his impact goes way beyond a tragic headline.
From Grafton Street Busker to Hollywood Glory
Most people know him from the 2007 micro-budget indie film Once, where he played a heartbroken Dublin busker alongside Czech musician Markéta Irglová. Their raw chemistry wasn't acting. It was real life captured on celluloid. When their track "Falling Slowly" took home the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2008, Hansard's stunned acceptance speech—"What are we doing here? This is mad."—won over millions of viewers who had never heard of him five minutes prior. Further reporting by Bloomberg explores related perspectives on the subject.
The film's transition to Broadway proved the songwriting had legs of its own. Eight Tony Awards later, Once was a global phenomenon. Yet, Hollywood success never changed his habits. He stayed grounded in the independent scene.
Long before the Oscar, Hansard fronted The Frames, carving out a bruising, passionate path through Irish rock music. He didn't chase radio trends. He built songs that started as quiet whispers and exploded into communal sing-alongs.
The Man Behind the Music
Hansard's community work was legendary in Ireland. For years, he organized the famous Christmas Eve busk outside Dublin's Gaiety Theatre, pulling in major artists to raise funds for the Dublin Simon Community to combat homelessness. He cared about ordinary people because he was an ordinary person who happened to have an extraordinary voice.
Artists like Bruce Springsteen, Billie Eilish, and former US President Barack Obama shared tributes following his passing, highlighting how far his acoustic storytelling traveled. But back home in Ireland, the grief felt intimate. Friends and family provided the music at his cathedral service, honoring a man who spent his life bringing strangers together through raw chords and honest lyrics.
You can buy records and fill stadiums, but earning the permanent love of a city takes something else entirely. Glen Hansard had that rare gift.
Listen to Once tonight. Play "Falling Slowly" or "Song of Good Hope." Keep his music spinning, because artists like him only come around once in a generation.
