Sharon Curley is a 20-year-old living with her parents and many brothers and sisters in Dublin. When she gets pregnant and refuses to name the father, she becomes the talk of the town.

Jimmy Rabbitte, just a tick out of school, gets a brilliant idea: to put a soul band together in Barrytown, his slum home in north Dublin. First he needs musicians and singers: things slowly start to click when he finds three fine-voiced females virtually in his back yard, a lead singer (Deco) at a wedding, and, responding to his ad, an aging trumpet player, Joey "The Lips" Fagan.