"Favourite" is a song by the Irish rock band Fontaines D.C. It was released on 18 June 2024 as the second single from the band's fourth studio album Romance.
It was placed at the end of the album because it served a "cyclical" nature of both ending the album and beginning it anew, with Chatten comparing it to how James Joyce's Finnegans Wake both begins and ends with the same sentence.[2]
"Favourite" was debuted live on 8 May 2024 at a surprise show in New York City's Warsaw club, marking the first show of the Romance era in a sold-out crowd of 1,000 people that included Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys.[3] The band also performed the song during their June set at Glastonbury Festival 2024.[4]
Composition
The track originated from a chord progression that guitarist Carlos O'Connell played to Chatten in 2022 while the band was recording their previous album, Skinty Fia.[5] Chatten originally wrote 12 verses for the song. Guitarist Conor Curley said, "I think Grian was on a spark once he had the 'Favourite' motif that he had so many different angles to write so many verses. It'd be cool to do the long version live sometime."[6]
The song was frequently described as jangle pop[7][8][9] and compared to The Smiths.[10][11] Curley said about the comparisons, "Shredding is obviously such an amazing thing to be able to do on a guitar, but when you can really write a feeling with a melody, like Johnny Marr did so well – that’s the goal."[12]
The video for the song was filmed in Madrid, where the band's guitarist Carlos O'Connell was born and raised. Bassist Conor Deegan said about the video, "This video is a reminiscing of the past; of each other’s childhoods we didn’t know. To see people we know on an intimate level as adults in the tender ages of childhood, we explore where we came from, and who on some level, still are."[1] The video was directed by the band and also features footage of all five band members as children from their families' home videos.[20]
