Bono, Bruce Springsteen, Billie Eilish, Finneas, Hozier, Lin-Manuel Miranda Pay Tribute to Glen Hansard: ‘He Really Was Who You Thought He Was’
Categoria: Musica
The beloved, Oscar-winning singer-songwriter died at 56 on Wednesday (July 29) in a motorcycle crash in Dublin.
Por Billboard | 30/07/2026
Glen Hansard’s music moved people. The beloved Irish troubadour who died in an early morning motorcycle crash on Wednesday (July 29) in Dublin inspired fans and fellow musicians with his passion, warmth and an open-hearted nature that unleashed an outpouring of emotion, fond memories and the kind of poetic memorials that would have been right at home in the lyrics to one of Hansard’s songs. The tributes continue to pour in for the singer who led the beloved Irish band The Frames, none more packed with intensity and poetry than a note from fellow Irish bard Bono of U2. “Sometimes I would wonder if Glen Hansard really existed…. Seriously, he was such an angelic presence… not otherworldly…in fact, very present this presence… A smiling rascal if you needed him to be… this most musical and mischievous archangel of Ballymun… no airs, plenty of graces,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer wrote on X . Bono shouted out former busker Hansard’s lifelong work advocating for the homeless in his country, calling him the “shining star” of the annual Christmas Eve busk Hansard would lead outside Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre to raise funds for homeless advocacy group Dublin Simon Community. “Sometimes the only one reminding the rest of us that Christmas began with a refugee born in a manger, which is hardly a step from living on the street,” Bono said. “To be utterly yourself by being more interested in others – a clue for any of us trying out different personas,” he added. “He really was who you thought he was. He could never walk by a person living rough without checking they were OK… and more than that, he worked very hard so that less people had to live on the streets in the first place.” After Hansard won the Oscar for best original song for the emotional ballad “Falling Slowly” from the 2007 hit micro-budget musical drama Once — in which he also co-starred with Swell Season bandmate Markéta Irglová — Bono said the crowds got so large that the busk had to be moved indoors, a venal sin for a performer who got his start playing on the street. “He would say ‘we’ll give it our best but it’s not a busk if we’re not on the street!’ …because that’s who he was – a performer at eye level in any situation. The stage was a separation he wouldn’t recognize. Of all the grand and gigantic venues he and The Frames played, you sensed the street was his most favoured place to perform. And street people, his favourite audience.” Calling him the “voice of the streets” and a “choir of angels in one man,” Bono tried to reconcile his grief by telling himself, “if he never existed, then he can never cease to exist. For me, he will always be everywhere I see a coin spinning into an open guitar case. May you rest in the peace you gave to so many.” Bruce Springsteen, who was joined by Hansard at the E Street Band’s July 27, 20