Skinty Fia

"Skinty Fia" is an old Irish swear that translates to "the damnation of the deer." It refers to the Irish giant deer, an extinct species whose range extended from Ireland to Lake Baikal in Siberia. Environmental factors in the Late Pleistocene doomed the giant deer populations with the most recent remains of the species carbon dated to about 7,700 years ago in western Russia. Fontaines D.C drummer Tom Coll's Irish-speaking great aunt used "skinty fia" as a colloquialism, which singer Gian Chatten took as a starting point for this song. He uses a metaphor of a doomed, paranoid relationship to explore the watering down and transformation of Irish culture abroad. "[It] sounds like mutation and doom and inevitability and all these things that I felt were congruous to my idea of Irishness abroad," he told Rolling Stone. "Like if you go to Boston, that expression of Irishness. That's skinty fia to me. That's that mutation. That's a new thing. It's not unlicensed and it's not impure. Just because it's diaspora, it's still pure. It's just a completely new beast."

The ominous-sounding song is the title track of Fonaines D.C.'s third album. After the band moved from Dublin to London to further their music careers, they retained a fondness for the land and people they left behind ("D.C." stands for "Dublin City"). Chatten was first drawn to the "skinty fa" expression, as he liked the sound of it. Then, as he thought about what it means, the frontman felt the phrase summarized the themes he wanted to explore in the album. "It's like Boston dyeing the rivers green and all that kind of thing," he told BBC Radio 1's Clara Amfo. "It's obviously a reversion for the embellishments, of what it means to be Irish."

Fontaines D.C. scored their first UK #1 album in the UK when Skinty Fia debuted at the top of the chart. Their previous best placing had been the #2 that A Hero's Death reached.