Remmick’s Super Awesome Saint Patrick’s Day Playlist
Say what you will about the tenets of transatlantic vampirism–at least it’s an ethos. From the moment Remmick the Vampire drops out of the sky and onto our screens–in minute forty-seven of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, to be exact–he is a villain with vision and style. He even has something of a code: bite hard, squad up, appropriate music, pierce the veil between the living and the dead, start the party. And every party needs a playlist.
This weekend’s Academy Awards capped off a dizzying year of Capital D Discourse about Sinners–its genre-defiance, its budget, its layered racial and religious commentary, its wins and noms, its assertion that one guy playing twins is cool again. But must the party end at the Oscars? The month of March brings still more questions about Sinners. For example: How did a Southern Gothic Horror Epic about Black Delta Blues tell one of its generation’s most perceptive and tragic versions of the Irish American story?
Remmick begins his journey as a terrorized Irishman and ends it as an American terrorist. He wants ancestral communion, music true enough to reconnect him to a lost Ireland destroyed by colonial land thieves (the standard dream of so many Irish American nostalgics). It is a human desire that he pursues it inhumanely, escalating his aggression until he becomes another white man terrorizing a Black establishment, a perpetuator of the Jim Crow hell from which he promises false escape. At the Juke Joint, Remmick covets and threatens a culture that he did not help build. And for this, he is an unforgettable 21st century monster.
He’s also an audiophile. So for Irish Heritage Month, we’re cutting straight to the question on everyone’s mind: If he were here today, still yearning, still unalive in that jig-ready mid-thirties body, how would he celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day? What is Remmick drinking? Who is he eating? And most importantly, what is he listening to?
The Tone Setter
- “Top O’ The Morning To Ya” by House of Pain
Millennial Remmick has arrived at the party, and you’ve never met a guy more excited to talk about House of Pain’s other songs. He smirks judgmentally as you mumble through the opening verse of “Jump Around.” He eyes the aux cord like a human jugular. And if the host doesn’t use an aux cord, that’s a damn shame too, because 2026 Remmick is an Old Head–a very specific and performative type of Old Head. Millenn-Rem moves in primarily white spaces and flexes on his friends with an exhaustive and exhausting knowledge of early underground rap. He consistently one-ups your favorite song with a deeper cut. But as March 17th approaches, Remmick’s needle-drops become more transparent, more revealing of his core mission: reconnection with his Irish ancestors through the attainment of Black music.
That’s right. Remmick is a fiend for early ’90s Irish American hooligan rap.
“Greetings, salutations, peace to the Nations of Islam and Zulu.” So begins the second verse of “Top O’ The Morning,” a song whose first verse references Dublin, leprechauns, shillelaghs, “Celtic Jazz”, and the 1912 ballad, “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” House of Pain was the first major artist to claim a seat for Irish America at the hip-hop dinner table, and it is notable that no rap act has tried to claim one since. (Remmick doesn’t want to talk about Macklemore’s 2011 “Irish Celebration”). With hindsight, it’s easy to see why a white guy who raps around South Boston in a Larry Bird jersey and shouts out Black Nationalism might be greeted with puzzlement in 2026.
But HoP made strange sense in the ’90s. They belonged to a broader Western pop culture moment, when activists and artists repeatedly compared or stressed kinship between Irish, Black, and colonized experiences worldwide. Spurred on by the tense and sectarian final years of the Northern Irish “Troubles,” these comparisons were alternately sincere, corny, profitable, political, or downright malicious. Sinead O’Connor dyed a Public Enemy logo into her scalp and rapped about the Great Famine as a designed genocide. The cult film The Commitments allowed a transatlantic wave of white people to claim (with varying levels of irony) that “the Irish are the Blacks of Europe”. Angela’s Ashes (book and film) brought images of post-colonial Irish squalor to living rooms across the diaspora. And the “Irish Slave Myth,” the psuedo-scholarly claim that Irish servants in 17th century Barbados were the original American slaves, enjoyed widespread propagation in the ’90s, encouraging generations of white supremacists to question and disparage the African American struggle.
Somewhere in the early ’90s, the future members of HoP attended a Public Enemy concert and witnessed an “alienating” rant against white people writ large. If they wanted to find an identity in the rap game, they would need a more ethnically specific niche. “All right,” HoP frontman Everlast recalled thinking in a 2010 NPR interview. “We’re going to make this House of Pain thing and we’re going to talk about being Irish.” The result was their 1992 self-titled debut album, praised by The Source as a “working-class Irish thang… a cross between a frat party and a bar room brawl.” House of Pain: Fine Malt Lyrics went Platinum.
Never had Irishness looked so cool among the scrappy global oppressed, and so comfortable alongside Black music. The 90s were Remmick’s Woodstock. His summer of “fellowship and love.”
The Bangers
A playlist is posse-dependent, and this creepy little immortal rolls deep. Remmick is forever searching for that one musical soulmate, his fili, his Preacher Boy; but he’s not as picky as he pretends to be. In a pinch, he’ll pregame with a dusty Klan couple and let the squad grow from there. And grow it will.
Of the three “ancient” cultures (Irish, Choctaw, and West African) referenced in the Sinners opening monologue, only the Irish are represented by an individual. Remmick’s evil is tied to his detachment from his community and people. He arrives onscreen as an archetypal Irishman in exile–far from home, alone, sun-burnt. His pursuers are Choctaw, a nation that famously organized in 1847 to donate a disproportionate share of its wealth to Irish Famine victims. Now they have organized again, in pursuit of an Irish-born monster. Just as evil flourishes in the absence of community, both charity and security thrive in its presence.
Remmick’s only refuge from the Choctaw is the home of Joan and Bert–a poor and melodically capable pair of racists, who shelter this vampire for his whiteness and lose their souls for it. But the infection is mutual. Remmick gets himself a folk trio, but he also becomes the beneficiary of white supremacy, a philosophy that inherently degrades his Irishness and foreignness. His cultural integrity declines as his militia grows.
When Remmick cannot bite the ones he loves, he bites the ones he’s with. That’s why for this Saint Patrick’s Day, it’s quantity over quality. Remmick just needs bodies in the door. For the opening third of the playlist, he’s throwing on the hits and attracting the masses:
2. “C’est La Vie” by B*Witched
It is difficult to explain B*Witched to someone who never owned a HitClip. And yet, like House of Pain, they make sense through a ’90s lens: they were a girl-group with big label backing, a relentlessly cheerful merger between two of the era’s most ubiquitous aesthetics: Disney Channel commercials and Irish Springs soap commercials. Remember, Millen-Rem is still biologically in his 30’s and C’est La Vie still gets the 30-somethings moving. This song is here to let you know that Irish vampirism isn’t just for the gothic and scarred. It’s for silly gooses and nostalgic pop girlies too.
3. “The Boys Are Back in Town” by Thin Lizzy
If the boys wanna bite, you better let ‘em.
4. “Dreams” by The Cranberries
He’s not going with “Zombie,” and that’s strategic. Remmick is keeping things light, lovely, euphoric. With this song, Remmick (who likely identifies as sapio-sexual) also leaves the door open for vampire romance. Dolores O’Riordan, in co-writing “Dreams” with guitarist Noel Hogan, tried to capture the sensation of “feeling really in love for the first time.” And there are few intros in pop history that better capture romantic free-fall than the slash-and-quiver of those opening guitar chords.
(On a personal and toxic note, my wife walked down the aisle to this song, so I suspect this is where she gets bitten. Since I am certainly getting bitten while air-guitaring the Thin Lizzy solo, I’d like for her to remain close behind me in the damned ever-after.)
The Old Band
If you’re the type of guy who brings banjo to a bar, you’re probably the type of guy to sneak your old band’s setlist onto the party speakers. With these songs, Remmick is giving himself every opportunity to turn to the sucker next to him and say, “you know, me and the boys used to do a mean version of…”
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5. “Purple Heather” by Van Morrison
A soul-rock cover of Remmick’s break-through hit? The very song that lured Mary out of the Juke Joint and into an ill-fated negotiation? He’ll have it! This is Van’s take on the Scottish-Irish traditional that has appeared in folk artist catalogues for decades as “Purple Heather,” “Wild Mountain Thyme,” or, as on the Sinners soundtrack, “Will Ye Go Lassie?” Unsurprisingly, there is nothing bluesy about the way Remmick, Joan, and Bert do this song. But its placement in the film is a significant change-marker. Jack O’Connell sits during the performance, visibly and audibly at home as he rolls through lyrics from 18th Century Scotland and a melody from 19th Century Ulster. It is a departure from that bouncy, smiley, proto-Disney version of “Pick Poor Robin Clean” that they auditioned with at the door. It is Remmick’s first attempt at a musical homecoming.
Van’s “Purple Heather” lays this British Isles composition directly atop a rhythm-and-blues jam. And somehow, the live performance soars. As much as any artist on this playlist, Van Morrison reminds me of a fili. A reclusive and transcendent vocal spiritualist, his finest performances seem to access something sacred. But his obsessive commitment to Black American music traditions has often led critics to slap on him that most racially fraught of genre labels: Blue-Eyed Soul.
Remmick thrives in the uneasiness of the Blue-Eyed Soul genre, and he loves an explicit connection between Irishness and Black music. This song is the playlist’s spiritual successor to “Top O’ The Morning To Ya,” and Remmick will use it to turn many blue eyes red.
6. “The Rocky Road to Dublin” by The Dubliners
“Rocky Road” could be an alternate universe biography of Remmick. There are no lassies, no wild herbs, just lyrics of brutality and endless wandering, tumbling over themselves in a slip-jig rhythm. The song’s protagonist is both a homesick exile and an opportunist abroad. In one stanza, he is robbed and harassed for his foreignness; in another, he picks fights. The singer is a self-styled victim, who ultimately escapes harm at the hands of a mob when he teams up with a group of people who are of a similar background to him. Sound familiar?
There’s a reason Remmick saved this one for his closing number in Sinners. He needed a full band. He needed more time in the presence of some real veil-piercing griot shit. With sustained exposure to the sounds emanating from the Juke Joint, Remmick’s music not only gets better. It gets more Irish. “Rocky Road” is so Irish it’s pre-Famine. It’s so Irish it has a 9/8 time signature. If you freeze and zoom during the “Rocky Road” dance scene, there’s a bitten Juke Joint patron carrying a bodhran drum. Where’d they get a bodhran, you ask? Does it matter? Where did Preacher Boy get those turn-tables?
The Vibes
There is a point in every great playlist when the narrative falls away, and it’s all just a feeling. At this point in the evening, Remmick’s crew is blood-drunk, drink-drunk, and ready to vibe. With these next tracks, Millen-Rem gives amuse-bouches of the different energies you can expect if you’re joining his mind-meld:
7. “Go Dig My Grave” by Lankum
Lest we forget the chilling, slow-grinning malice that Jack O’Conell brings to this role, Lankum is here. Singer Radie Peat’s performance on this song might be the closest thing we have in modern music to keening–the ancient Gaelic practice, long discouraged by the Catholic Church, of raw funereal wailing. And that sound is by design. “Go Dig My Grave” is about a mournfulness that eats its way through soul and body, as a young girl, preparing to hang herself, laments simultaneously the loss of her lover and the loss of her life.
The all-consuming grief of this song becomes terror when played at a Remmick party. The song sounds like a wake, and as it winds and grinds toward loudness, you realize that the wake you’re at might be your own, and you will, indeed, be awake for all of it. This is the sound you hear when you spot glowing eyes across a pitch-black field. This is the droning sound of evil revealing itself.
8. Bad Penny, by Rory Gallagher
Remmick, as we know, is a real “Blues is Life” guy. The musical British Invasion–like the British invasion of Ireland–altered his tastes considerably, and as the Blues of the Delta morphed and mainstreamed into a Blues-Rock amplifier arms race, Remmick developed a Boomer Dad’s obsession with bitchin’ solos. He spent much of the late ’60s with a Clapton is God poster in his room, and he has multiple vintage guitars that his skill level does not warrant.
For the Festival of Patrick, Remmick is spotlighting Ireland’s first and finest Blues guitar hero. Rory Gallagher was a guitarist’s guitarist: stripped-down band, loud strat, and a sick tone, brother. An undersung virtuoso, Gallagher creates a perfect opening in the playlist for Remmick to work annoying Blues trivia into the conversation.
9. “Liar’s tale” by Kneecap
Hey Rem, there’s this drug-addled, Irish language, electro-rap duo, known for whipping audiences into frenzies, raging against colonial injustices, winking at the possibility of political violence, and tinging their videos with horror tropes and Irish mythology. Should we check them out?
10. “Seanchaí” by The Scratch
Speaking of frenzied audiences, here’s some 2020 folk-metal. But it is so much less, and so much more than just folk-metal, isn’t it? In Irish culture, a seanchaí is an oral storyteller, a folk historian, a keeper and transmitter of lore–a role not so different from that of the ancient fili mentioned in the Sinners intro. As a song, “Seanchaí” is a single sentence (“tell tales upon the crack in the wall, the man is a seanchaí”) sung with rising intensity and harmonization for nearly four minutes over a feverpitched instrumental crescendo. It is the perfect song for an Irish frontman who can literally mind-control his bandmates.
Crying Irish
At this point, Remmick has hijacked not only the souls of his followers, but also their collective heartache. This is where he softens up, sits back, opens up. Most of his companions are fresh-bitten and adjusting to the new eternity. Emotions are raw. Swaying hugs are in order.
11. Carrickfergus, by The Clancy Brothers
“But the sea is wide, and I can’t swim over.” Such is the lament of the heartbroken narrator of “Carrickfergus,” one of the all time drunk-yellable ballads. The words are sung to a lost lover, but for Remmick, they may well apply to Ireland itself. Consider that, despite the miraculous advancements in travel that Remmick witnessed over the last two centuries, it remains nearly impossible to move overseas without exposing yourself to the sun. Remmick never went home.
12. Nothing Compares 2 U, by Sinead O’Connor
Another deeply fraught collaboration between American and Irish musicians. If Remmick is capable of truly crying, it is during this cover. Sinead will always pierce the veil.
13. The Parting Glass, The High Kings
I’ve never loved this song. It’s a bit too schmalzy, too all-men’s-accapella-choir for me. But I still sing along to its bigass chorus whenever I hear it, like a man hypnotized. Perhaps this is why I feel so positive that “Parting Glass” will be the last sound I acknowledge before I lose complete control of my consciousness, my mind slipping wholly and eternally into the drunken singularity of a chain Irish pub, managed by an ancient and very annoying vampire.
