In 2018, Ronan Keating appeared at Allsang på Grensen, a Norwegian musical event. On a stage made to look like a garden, the seated audience waited excitedly for the Irish pop star. Keating strode onto the stage arm-in-arm with Swedish legend Carola to perform a memorable duet that has been viewed over 21 million times on YouTube.
The familiar opening bars of “No Matter What” – a worldwide hit for Keating’s band Boyzone in 1998 – started up, and the audience quietened in anticipation at this coming together of hugely acclaimed singers. Keating has sold over 20 million records across the world as a solo artist, and 25 million with Boyzone. Carola, meanwhile, has been one of Sweden’s most successful singers since breaking through in the 1980s.
Keating took the first verse, as sung by Stephen Gately in the Boyzone version of the song. A mother and daughter were seen swaying joyously in the audience. Then Carola and Keating sang together before they exchanged solo verses. Carola dominated the end of the song with her soaring vocals, making Keating tap his chest in wonder at the performance. As they finished, they hugged and bowed to the ecstatic audience.
Carola is a massive star in Scandinavia. Her debut album, “Främling”, was released in 1983. It has sold one million copies in Sweden, making it the best-selling album ever in the country, even outselling any albums released by ABBA. She represented Sweden three times in the Eurovision Song Contest, winning the competition by a narrow margin in 1991. She won with the upbeat song “Fångad av en stormvind”, and the video of her winning performance has been viewed over 350,000 times on YouTube. Below is Ronan singing with his daughter.
46-year-old Keating’s most recent album release was 2021’s “Songs from Home”, his twelfth solo album. It comprised eleven cover versions of songs by Irish musicians, and one original track co-written by Keating and Dan Healy. In recent years, Keating has focused more on TV work, including working as a coach on The Voice Kids UK and The Voice of Germany.