CHRISTMAS EP: Local singer Grace Foley is releasing her full Christmas EP today (Friday). Photo: Michelle Crean

It's been "a year of starts and sudden stops" for local singer Grace Foley - and this is the opening line in her brand-new song which is set to be released as part of her full Christmas EP today (Friday).

Grace will launch the EP with a Facebook and Instagram live, today (Friday) at 8pm. There she will be singing the songs from the EP and telling stories behind the songs.

The singer who has been narrowly avoiding lockdowns all year tells us what 2020 has been like for her.

This has been a very mixed year. Like all of her peers in the entertainment industry, the Killarney singer desperately misses performing live in front of an audience. She misses the buzz, the sharing of stories and songs and the interaction with people after her concerts. On the other side of things, 2020 has been a great year in terms of her creativity. Grace recorded three of her singles for the year back in the spring and then her music videos on March 12, the day it was announced that the country was starting to close down due to COVID-19. Since then, Grace has gone on to perform many live online concerts, both on her own social media platforms and on pages across Ireland and America as well as a live concert in St Mary's Cathedral Killarney which was broadcast via the parish webcam. She wrote and released a song called ‘Together Apart’ which she recorded in her wardrobe and the songstress even appeared on RTE television on the 'Today Show' where she sang live from her living room with her little dog Kerri on her lap!

Grace was thrilled when she received the news that she had been awarded Arts Council funding to write and record her own songs which she went on to record at Ventry Recording Studio in Balbriggan, County Dublin. Yet again, Grace couldn’t believe that she had just finished her songs when it was announced that Dublin was facing further restrictions meaning she would not have been able to record had she arrived a day later! Her last near miss with lockdown came in late October when she recorded her last music videos for the year only to finish up for the day and get a notification on her phone that the entire country was moving to Level 5 lockdown.

One of the songs recorded with her Arts Council funding is a Christmas song and, with a nudge from her husband John, Grace decided to throw caution to the wind and release a full Christmas EP! This is released today (Friday), and features four festive favourites, recorded at Little Dylan Studios Killarney, as well as Grace’s own song, ‘Goodbye to Dublin’. The EP titled ‘A Time for Christmas, Vol. 1’ is available on www.gracefoley.ie from November 27 and on all online platforms from December 11.

"Those who buy physical copies of the record will be awarded with a song that is not available on digital platforms," Grace said.

"While the future for performers is still very unsure, I will always look back on 2020 as the year when music became so much more than a career. It became a lifeline for the present, a connection to the past and a ray of hope for the future."