Nothing compared to Sinéad- Offaly music columnist

First Published, August 13th, 2014

It's hard to know where so much of 2014 has already disappeared to, but sure enough here we are again, just a few months out from that time of the year when people start looking back over the twelve months they're about to leave behind and begin compiling their  Best  Of  and  Top-10  lists.

I know this year's road still has some miles of travelling left on it, but I'm ready right here and right now to declare my vote for Album Of The Year.  I'M NOT BOSSY, I'M THE BOSS  is  SINÉAD O' CONNOR's tenth solo album, and simply put, nothing compares to this.

Certainly nothing I've heard from anyone else this year pulses with the same kind of sheer unbridled, unburdened excitement and energy - not to mention confidence - as you'll find here. The twelve songs on the regular edition amount to just over forty minutes of aural bliss (fifteen tracks over fifty glorious minutes on the deluxe package).

This is genuine musical brilliance, the kind that leaves so much of what the charts and, sadly, radio, all too often present to us as the best music that's being made these days laid as naked as the fabled Emperor stood in his new clothes. This feels like we're listening to the result of Sinéad showing just how much she's grown into her own soul over the past few years. And she's care-free and fearless in showing that she's still growing into that soul.

If there's a more polarising female artist than Sinéad in Irish music, then I can't think of her. She is, and for the most part always has been, one of those people who either totally attracts others to her, often in an almost protective way, or else repels them completely, in a state of near disgust. There is no in-between. No kinda-sorta-sometimes- feelings about her. It's love or hate. It's  “she's a fool”  or “she's great”. Again, more than most other Irish artists, male or female, she's been part of our lives for so long and in so many ways more than just those related to her music career.

And because of that, this album feels like a triumph you'd wish for one of your best friends. A celebration, a release of the joy and happiness you could only wish for someone whose life you care about every bit as much as your own. You know the way when you see someone happy and smiling and it makes you smile too, just because you're happy for them? Yeah, well that's this album. There's something pretty cool about knowing that it's come from such a peaceful and loved time of her life. She deserves it.

The lead single,  Take Me To Church, is a chest-opener of a tune! It goes right for your heart, whether you're ready for it or not. It gets under your skin, into your mind and becomes a part of you, almost fusing with the very marrow of your own bones. It's a fight song in some ways, it's got that fire in the blood emotional surge to it that leaves you battle ready and reaching for the repeat button. And yet, for all of that, there's a dept to this tune that's pulled from a darkness that only the strongest spirits can visit and return from, turning the experience of their pain into their clay of creation. Take the lines,  So cut me down from this here tree/Cut the rope from off of me/Set me on the floor/I'm the only one I should adore.

Song Of The Year on the Album Of The Year. It won't have a competitor to touch it.

The lyrical content of  I'm Not Bossy, I'm The Boss  is superb throughout. In  Kisses Like Mine, another stormer of truth, tease and sensuality, she sings,  See I'm special forces/They call me in after divorces/To lift you up/You thought you weren't much/And I'll mean every word/But I'll be gone with the birds/Baby I just can't be yours.'

Straight out of  Kisses Like Mine  and you're into the equally stunning  Your Green Jacket, which confesses;  Smelled your jacket/When you left it on its lonely post/Wrapped it 'round me/Like it was the holiest of ghosts.

In  The Vishnu Room, there's an almost hymnal, reverential tone to a song that is, at the same time, one rooted every bit as much in love's more earthly manifestation as it is in any possibly heavenly sense;  Oh my love/My delight/Is to be with you in the night/Oh your breath/Your nakedness/All your softness/And your hardness.

Regardless of what anyone's personal opinion of Sinéad O'Connor may be, few would deny that throughout her life she has - too often at a great personal cost - been relentlessly brave in voicing her opinions, taking a stand and then standing her ground. That same courage shines through here too, on tracks like  8 Good Reasons  where she sings,  You know I don't much like life/I don't mind admitting that it ain't right/You know I love to make music/But my head got wrecked by the business.

And in  Streetcars,  where she wonders,  If I were dying, if I were dying/What would I want/What would I want with me?/If I were dying, if I were dying/Who would I want/Who would I want to see?

For a long time there was the chance that when people spoke about SinÉad it would only be the perceived low-points or moments of controversy which have so dramatically been mile-markers of her life which would be to the fore. The becoming a Priest (so what, why not??). The shaved head (and again, so what??). And of course, the moment in October of 1992 when she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II on  Saturday Night Live. She was all but vilified for her action at the time, but as it turns out, she knew more than most (more than most would admit to, at the very least) about what secrets still lay hidden beneath the protective cloak of the Catholic Church at that time, didn't she. And, in all probability, still to this day.

Let me digress slightly here for just a moment to tie in a story about one of my own songwriting heroes, Kris Kristofferson.

Two weeks after that  Saturday Night Live  show Sinéad was performing at a 30th Anniversary Tribute Concert for Bob Dylan. As she took to the stage certain sections of the Madison Square Garden crowd cheered her while others jeered. Eventually, the jeering became so loud that Sinéad decided not to sing the song she was supposed to that evening and instead asked for her mic to be turned up.

She proceeded, without any musical backing whatsoever, to shout over the noise of the screaming crowd the words of Bob Marley's  War, the song she had sung on  Saturday Night Live. Part of the song's lyric speaks about child abuse and when she got to those particular lines, she just stopped, stared defiantly but obviously shaken and hurt at the audience, and then started to walk off stage.

Once again in her life Sinéad O'Connor had just proved the woman she was. And here Kristofferson proved the man he was. He didn't just stand there and watch this unfold. He walked out to meet her and wrapped his arms around her as she cried. He wasn't about to let what had become a mob mentality hurl abuse at this vulnerable young woman. He became, in effect, her human shield. His heart over hers. As powerful an expression and symbolic an act of love as the moment called for and needed. That we all might have that compassion within us in such moments, should we find ourselves on the edge of such cruelty and unreason.

Apart from the excellence of the music, there are a few other reasons why I love this record. And they all demonstrate exactly what is lost in the nothingness of downloading music. Music, albums specifically, are about more than just the songs. The songs, naturally, are at the core of things, but it's all the other brilliant little things that come with the whole album package that play so special a part in making music such a powerful source of inspiration.

At the end of the lyric booklet is a note from Sinéad explaining how this album came into being. I don't want to steal from any of you the joy of reading it yourselves so I won't go into all the details, but let me just tell you part of it concerns Sinéad describing how she was coached to walk in heels by her boyfriend Dave and her friend Joe! And how Dave has, among other things, allowed her the freedom of self to pose in a latex dress for the album's cover, to which Sinéad relates,  “My mother would be horrified, it's fantastic”.

But for me, by far and away the best line of an album full of wonderful songwriting, comes on the very last page of the booklet. And it's every bit as revealing and as cheeky as some of the song lyrics are. And again, it made me smile in that way you do when you're just really and truly happy for someone. And you don't even have to know them, because you don't have to know someone personally to be happy for them, ya know.

The line reads simply,  “This album is dedicated to me”.

And rightfully so, Sinéad, because like I said, you deserve it!

***

August 2023

Rest in peace, Sinéad. We needed you amongst us, the outcasts, wounded, and the broken.

REST NOW, WARRIOR – For Sinéad

Now, let this warrior know rest

Allow this poet draw her breath

And let this prophet find her peace

In a passing much more than death

For onward now has she ventured

To roam free o’er those longed-for lands

The curse of the seer lifted

No longer beseeching demands

Now, as ever in our mourning

Senses heightened to ev’ry change

Grief is sharper on the swallow

Amidst the too early exchange

Of voice, of vision, and of flame

For mem’ry only evermore

Your torch is now your legacy

And ours to carry and adore

How we needed you amongst us

Outcasts, wounded, and the broken

We followed you into battle

Your name always truth when spoken

Your path came to too soon an end

To lead you from the wilderness

For as long as you could, you fought

And tamed life’s rage with tenderness

So rest now, warrior of light

You’ve rhymed all you could from chaos

Pity us that could not love you more

May your song bless us in our loss.   

~ Anthony Sullivan, July 31st, 2023.