Over Christmas I watched a number of musical programmes and enjoyed most of them. One I was not impressed with however was Celtic Thunder Christmas. I’d watched a couple of their programmes before and liked them, but this one didn’t live up to either my expectations or the title. You’d expect something called Celtic Thunder to be lively, energetic, and above all, Celtic. What we got was a mess of English and American songs, including very over-popularised hymns, and the songs mostly crooner type, right down to, for heaven’s sake! Disney’s When You Wish Upon a Star. Celtic Thunder? Yeah right!
In one medley they did sing a couple of verses in what was probably Irish, and that was it. It was insipid to the point of boredom and I was disappointed by the entire event. There was no flash, little dash, nothing to make me sit up and listen, nothing much Celtic and no thunder. Oh, and they did a very bland and banal version of Leonard Cohen’s Alleliuja at one stage. Groan. These guys are supposed to be professionals. I heard that done far better by a recent contestant in X Factor. In short, I felt that the title of this was a misnomer. Don’t do that again if you want to keep this watcher watching.