Career
By the mid-1990s Harte, as with countless Irish musicians, was utterly disillusioned by the progress of Boyzone and Louis Walsh in "turn Ireland more into a country for boy bands". He has described this difficult period, "Yet at times like that I felt I'd never get a break and was desperate because during the boy band era no one wanted singer-songwriters. It would have helped if, say Boyzone, had recorded songs by Irish songwriters, but most of their songs were written by songwriters from abroad, so we didn't even get a chance to have a song covered. If I had, that certainly would have paid the mortgage for a few years! Although, at first, like most Irish singer-songwriters I was totally anti-boy bands until I realised we had to try and work our way through it".
After years of struggle, Harte entered the Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) television show You're a Star. The show set records for Irish TV ratings over the period of November 2002 to March 2003 and Harte came out on top, earning the opportunity to represent Ireland at Eurovision Song Contest 2003 in Riga. In Riga he performed "We've Got the World" (written by Martin Brannigan and Keith Molloy). He finished in a respectable eleventh place in the competition. "We've Got the World" reached number one on the Irish Singles Chart.
In 2003, Harte recorded a cover version of Beyoncé Knowles's "Crazy In Love" for Even Better than the Real Thing Vol. 1, and in 2004 a cover version of Eamon's "Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)" (albeit without the "Fuck It" part).
In 2006, Harte released his second studio album, Live and Learn.
In 2007, Harte appeared on Celebrities Go Wild, an RTÉ reality television show in which eight celebrities had to fend for themselves in the wilds of rural Connemara.
He performed at Croke Park during half-time in the 2012 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship semi-final between Cork and Donegal. After Donegal won the Sam Maguire Cup the next month, he performed at their homecoming in Donegal.
Read more about this topic: Mickey Joe Harte
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