New Music: John Prine & Dolores Keane – It’s a Cheating Situation

It’s hard to conceptualise the impact Dolores Keane had as a woman, specifically an Irish woman, and figurehead for a changing Ireland.

A founding member of De Dannan and a remarkable solo artist, her death on the 16th of March has been felt by a lot of people in Ireland and beyond, including myself. But it’s as a singer that she should best be remembered. Known as a folk musician, she had a voice that transcended genre, as if bending them to the gravity and majesty of her voice.

There are many songs I could have picked to highlight Kean’s work, Caledonia or Galway Bay to name but two, but It’s a Cheating Situation – a duet with the much-missed John Prine on his 1999 album In Spite of Ourselves – shows her at her best. Folk, country, or rock – no matter what the song’s twists and turns threw at her, Keane had a voice to match it, as if she could bend sound to her will.

Very much a part of Irish culture for decades, her lost rests heavy. Nanci Griffith described Keane as having ‘a sacred voice,” and this track shows why. Tá brón orm.

Dolores Keane (26 September 1953 – 16 March 2026)