Fontaines D.C. – Black Boys on Mopeds

Fontaines D.C. cover Sinéad O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds” for War Child’s HELP(2) charity compilation, out now on War Child Records. The album — a sequel to the landmark 1995 HELP record — was recorded at Abbey Road Studios over a single week in November 2025, produced by James Ford, and features contributions from Arctic Monkeys, Oasis, Olivia Rodrigo, Pulp, Depeche Mode, Beth Gibbons, Big Thief, Wet Leg, Cameron Winter, Damon Albarn, and many others. All proceeds go to War Child UK.

O’Connor’s original came out in 1990, a protest song that landed on I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, and it has not softened with age. Fontaines’ version stays close to the source: Grian Chatten delivers a calm, plainspoken vocal that suits the song’s controlled anger, and the band builds toward a fuzz-noise crescendo with strings that producer James Ford described as “Velvet Underground-y”. It’s a dignified cover of a song that demanded exactly that. Ford explained the choice in conversation with NME: “Sinead was on the first ‘Help’ record and was such an icon of Irish music. A lot of her lyrics and the things she stood for seem to be pretty relevant to what’s happening now, unfortunately”. The band had previously performed an acoustic version of the track in Nashville in October 2022, so this isn’t a cold take — they know the song, and it shows.

Fontaines are also featured on the Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man soundtrack (Sony), where Chatten collaborates with composers Antony Genn and Martin Slattery and joins Lankum for a new version of their song “Hunting The Wren”. Of everything released this week with their name on it, this is the one that earns its place.