Fallon's Town Talk: Éowyn, Killeagh and Trump among the headline-makers 

The Western Alzheimer’s 5k/10k Walk on St. Stephen’s Day (also St. Coman’s Day, of course) was a resounding success. The lovely weather helped to attract a huge crowd for an event that is now established as a fixture of the festive season in Roscommon Town and environs.

The route brought walkers through Mote Park where the devastation wrought by Storm Éowyn in January 2025 is still plain to see. It was a grim reminder that Éowyn was one of the seminal events of last year, a hurricane of such proportions that even the oldest and wisest residents of Roscommon couldn’t remember a worse storm.

Christmas and New Year is a time for nostalgia. A staple of New Year’s Day television is the spectacular concert of classical music from Vienna. It brought me back to my childhood when I used to dread that concert, it went on for the best part of three hours, supplanting the classic films that were the highlights of Christmas television.

In fairness, the New Year’s Day schedules haven’t changed much in the last 40 years: along with the Vienna extravaganza, RTÉ 1 showed 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' on New while 'The Sound of Music' was on BBC 1. Nowadays, I can appreciate the high art being broadcast from Vienna but it helps to have the option to switch to myriad other channels.

In the music world of 2025, Taylor Swift’s reign continued. While this is the golden age of female solo artists in pop, the breakout Irish acts of 2025 were male groups: Amble, Kingfishr (yes, I did have to double-check the spelling) and Kneecap. Kneecap attracted controversy on a number of fronts, but one unqualified positive is they have popularised the Irish language among the young people who are their core audience.

Kingfishr’s ‘Killeagh’ was the most evocative song of last year, a sporting anthem that spread far beyond the confines of sport, ending the year as the most streamed song on Spotify with more than 37 million streams. The Athlone Town women’s soccer team – one of the memorable local success stories of 2025 – adopted it, as did many others with no connection to Cork hurling.

‘Dancing at the Crossroads’, the theme tune of Wexford’s All-Ireland hurling victory in 1996, has stood on a pedestal as the greatest GAA song for almost 30 years. ‘Killeagh’ has joined it and feels like a song that will become a lasting part of the soundtrack of Irish life.

The death of a pope is usually a defining moment in any year. So it was in 2025 with the passing of Pope Francis, somewhat symbolically, at Easter. Francis was popular, except with conservative Catholics on social media, and was widely mourned. His successor, Leo XIV, has been a low-key figure so far although there are signs in recent weeks that the first-ever US pontiff is becoming more assertive about world events.

Of course, it is another American leader, President Donald Trump, who dominated geopolitics in 2025. Mercurial, erratic, unpredictable; whatever adjective you want to use, Trump bestrides the world stage in a way rarely seen before.

US presidents, from Roosevelt to Obama, have always been major figures but Trump has, in less than a year, upended the global order his predecessors upheld since 1945. Institutions set up in the wake of World War 11, such as the United Nations, are fighting to remain relevant.

Left-wing politicians regularly mocked the title of ‘Leader of the Free World’ which was bestowed on whoever was the US president, but the rest of the world knew the United States would stand up to the Soviet Union or, latterly, Russia.

Trump has highlighted an unpalatable truth: Europe had become too dependent on the US for its defence, and now it has to look after itself when standing up to Russian aggression. The EU and NATO are struggling to adapt to the new reality of a detached US while Ukraine’s fight for survival has become precarious. One of the indelible images of 2025 is Trump and his vice-president JD Vance humiliating Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office.

In the months since that debacle, leaders of western democracies meeting Trump have become akin to supplicants visiting the court of a medieval king or emperor. In contrast, a dictator like Putin is able to outflank the US administration.

That some of those democratic leaders, notably Starmer and Macron, are unpopular with their own electorates diminishes their credibility with the US even further. It means that the dramatic nature of world politics will continue into 2026.