Career
Hannon was born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the son of Brian Hannon, a retired Church of Ireland clergyman and former Bishop of Clogher. He moved with his family to Enniskillen, in County Fermanagh, in 1982. While there he attended Portora Royal School.
In 2000, he and Joby Talbot contributed 4 tracks for Ute Lemper's collaboration album, Punishing Kiss.
In 2004, he played alongside the Ulster Orchestra for the opening event of the Belfast Festival at Queen's. In 2005, he contributed vocals to his long-time collaborator Joby Talbot's soundtrack for the movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
In 2006, it was announced that Hannon was to lend his vocal ability to the Doctor Who soundtrack CD release, recording two songs — "Love Don't Roam" for the 2006 Christmas special, "The Runaway Bride", and a new version of "Song For Ten", originally used in 2005's "The Christmas Invasion". On 12 January 2007, The Guardian website's "Media Monkey" diary column reported that Doctor Who fans from the discussion forum on the fan website Outpost Gallifrey were attempting to organise mass downloads of the Hannon-sung "Love Don't Roam", which was available as a single release on the UK iTunes Store. This was in order to attempt to exploit the new UK singles chart download rules, and get the song featured in the Top 40 releases.
The same year, Hannon added his writing and vocal talents to the Air album Pocket Symphony, released in the United States on 6 March 2007. He is featured on the track "Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping", for which he wrote the lyrics. This song had been originally written for and sung by Charlotte Gainsbourg on her album, 5:55. Though it was not included in its 2006 European release, it was added as a bonus track for its American release on 24 April 2007.
Hannon won the 2007 Choice music award for his 2006 album, Victory for the Comic Muse. It was announced the next day that he had left EMI by 'mutual consent'.
When the band Keane played at the O2 Arena in London in July, "A Bad Dream" was introduced by Hannon. He introduced it by reading the poem "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" by W.B. Yeats, upon which the song is based.
He is credited with composing the theme music for the comedy shows The IT Crowd, and Father Ted, the latter being a tune specially written for the show that was later reworked into The Divine Comedy's "Songs Of Love" from their breakthrough album Casanova. Both shows were created or co-created by Graham Linehan. For the Father Ted episode A Song For Europe, Hannon co-wrote and sang My Lovely Horse, a deliberately bad song that Fathers Ted and Dougal enter into Eurosong (a parody of the Eurovision Song Contest). In the same episode, Hannon wrote the 'typical' eurovision ballad that is sung by Father Ted's nemesis, and Hannon appears on stage with him as one of the backing singers. A dream sequence in the episode shows Ted and Dougal in My Lovely Horse's pop video, with Hannon singing. As well as this, 'Eoin McLove' sings "My Lovely Mayo Mammy", but his voice and the song were both contributed by Hannon. When a raffle is being held in order to raise funds to repair the roof of the parochial house, the Kraftwerk-esque quartet of priests enlisted to perform play an electronic piece of music composed and performed by him. Both of the advertisements for telephone numbers; in The IT Crowd (the new emergency number) and Father Ted (Priest Chatback) have jingles composed by Hannon. In the episode A Christmassy Ted, his name is one of the guesses given by Mrs. Doyle, in finding out the name of the mysterious guest. He's considered one of the last crooners in pop landscape.
A new Divine Comedy album, Bang Goes the Knighthood, was released in May 2010.
Hannon has also collaborated with Thomas Walsh, from the Irish band Pugwash, to create a cricket themed pop album under the name The Duckworth Lewis Method. The first single, "The Age of Revolution", was released in June 2009, and a full length album released the week after.
In April of 2012, Hannon's first opera commission, Sevastopol, was performed by the Royal Opera House. It was part of a program called OperaShots, which invites musicians not typically working within the opera medium to create an opera. Sevastopol was based upon Leo Tolstoy's Sevastopol Sketches.
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