Sinead O' Connor

At twenty-three, weighed down by a personal history marked by sexual abuse from her mother, arrests for shoplifting, an unwanted pregnancy, a blistering but hard-to-digest debut album, a marriage followed by separation, endless trouble with her record label and the tabloids, even suspected of supporting the IRA, Sinéad O'Connor takes time out to reflect. She spends the summer in strict isolation, eating vegetarian, practising yoga and studying the Kabbalah. What emerges is an entirely self-produced album that, against all expectations, would become the first true blockbuster of the '90s: "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got". A record as extreme as its predecessor, but its opposite: where "The Lion And The Cobra" was visceral, impulsive and uneven, this one is spiritual, considered and deeply unified. There's no shortage of emotion, but it's all turned inward, filtered through the perspective of someone who, having passed through a dark season, feels she has learned something and can now allow herself to aspire to redemption. After hell, purgatory.

Sinéad's decision to self-produce, beyond signalling her intent to take back control of her life, also has the merit of putting an end to the stylistic chaos of before, following instead the path of absolute minimalism: almost every song relies on just two, at most three instruments, stripping their expressive power down to its essence and making the most of it.

The album opens with "Feel So Different", a manifesto. Over a bed of strings, Sinéad raises a prayer to her new point of reference, God. Her voice doles out, drop by drop, the off-key notes that had made her famous, but the song still delivers the crescendo the ear expects, with strings in rapid counterpoint and the vocal climbing an octave as if miming a mystical ascension. Does it sound like Enya? A bit. But the sound is bare, unadorned, free of pointless reverb, and the spirit is that of a punk Mary Magdalene. "I Am Stretched On Your Grave" is her most successful attempt to merge traditional style with '90s sound: over a hip-hop beat she programmed herself, Sinéad intones a Gaelic poem following an Arabic scale. In the closing section comes a surprise: a violin enters, stubbornly playing the melody of an Irish ballad. A stroke of genius. Next comes another voice-and-strings piece, "Three Babies", which hits the listener with the first wave of pain and romanticism: it's hard not to surrender to the shivers her voice draws out, crying out the story of an abortion, until it breaks at just the right point in the chorus.

"The Emperor's New Clothes" picks up the thread of her early sound again, a driving 4/4 rock number with a full band setup — guitars, drums and all — in which Sinéad levels an accusation at the record industry and tabloids for meddling in her private life. Original, and remarkably bold for a pop record, is the long instrumental coda, built on just two chords with no variation. Another accusation, this time aimed at Thatcher's politics and racial hatred, is "Black Boys On Mopeds", an exquisitely delicate folk ballad for guitar and voice that betrays many hours spent listening to Bob Dylan.

The second side is weaker than the first: "You Cause As Much Sorrow", the only truly mediocre track on the album, insists on staying soft for no good reason. "Jump In The River" is more interesting: opening with a gunshot, it plays like slowed-down punk-rock, with electric guitars and drums echoing in a hostile, fractured space, and a dark vocal recalling events so personal they verge on uncomfortable: "There have been hard days / But I've always loved everything / Like when we did it so hard / that there was blood on the wall". "The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance" alone would be enough to justify buying the record: left for four verses to the purity of voice and guitar, two chords and the story of her divorce, it explodes unexpectedly into the most epic finale of Sinéad's career, her voice combining the reckless energy of her debut with the steadiness of maturity.

To close this ideal arc, after the climax, there can only be a track with no instruments at all, the title track: more than just a beautiful song, it's a declaration of faith, in which the Kabbalah, yoga and past experiences become the raw material for shaping an inner landscape where she can find the peace and strength needed to move forward.

"Nothing Compares 2 U" deserves a discussion of its own. The fact that Sinéad O'Connor's most famous song — and, according to the uncharitable, the only one she'll be remembered for — wasn't written by her makes it both the blessing and the curse of her catalogue. The objection is simple: what makes a song what it is? Sometimes it's the composition. Sometimes it's the performance. In this case, the composition, as everyone knows, is just a leftover scrap from Prince's overproductive genius: barely four chords. What Sinéad did, crafting an arrangement of admirable simplicity, and above all interpreting the lyrics and melody, was turn that chord progression into an anthem to the most desperate romanticism, to the sheer force of pain, reaching heights of pathos with no equal in pop music. If "Nothing Compares 2 U" was voted "best love song of the '90s", the credit certainly doesn't belong to its author.

There's a good debate to be had over which record is Sinéad's masterpiece. Many fans prefer "The Lion And The Cobra". Others, myself included, believe Sinéad reached her creative peak with the fragile, violent "Universal Mother". Her more recent albums leave one puzzled. But "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got", besides being her biggest commercial success and the strongest collection of singles she ever put together, undeniably possesses one admirable quality that has often been missing — both across her discography and in her personal life, and in the various clashes between the two: balance.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

03/11/2006