…and this is why I listen to YOUR music. Thank you for making O’ Conner a topic of discussion. “Lion and the Cobra” changed me the first day I popped the cassette into my ‘88 Cavalier. How you described it—- hell yes! That was it. “I Am Stretched on Your Grave.” I had never heard a woman, at this point in my life, say such things in music. I rushed to a dictionary to understand the word “maidenhead.” She filled my head with overwhelming imagery and deep surgical cuts to let my being begin to flower. To explore my own voice in film school— through photography and editing. I teetered on the precipice of bisexuality and never wanting anyone to ever touch me. She made me tough. She made me vulnerable. She gave me voice along with my pack of goth friends. To this day, I am grateful to have that album as a cornerstone of my being, just like 3 of yours that brought me farther in life as a spoken word poet and writer. ♥️🌱
I love reading how this record worked its way past who you were trying to be and grabbed ahold of you with such fervor. You share that metamorphic effect beautifully. Thanks for writing these.
As I think I said when you posted on IG about this the other day, yes, O’Connor’s first two albums hold up so well. It’s kind of mind blowing. That thing with how she wails “Jerusalem” bowled me the fuck over when I heard it booming out of my friend Allison’s shitty boom box at the age of 15. I didn’t listen to either of the records for a long time and then they came back into rotation in the past 5 years, and they still have that concentrated punch and intensity that is one of O’Connor’s many gifts. “I Am Stretched On Your Grave” still pummels me. I love how you write about your own experience of musical discovery. (The observations on how much an openness and embrace of female, queer, and nonbinary perspectives are embedded into the music at a time when no one was really even using those terms is spot on. Even open bisexuality was controversial at the time; I found out firsthand that the conventional wisdom was that you were supposed to “pick a side,” like desire and love are some fucking football game. 🙄). Anyway, I’m no musician—writer here—but my biological father was and music is such a seminal influence for me, too, music always taps into an endless wealth of rich meaning, not to mention autobiographical associations. So musical discovery has been a lifelong pursuit and obsession for me, along with books, arts, and the like. I laughed out loud when you said you resisted O’Connor because of the hype. Despite being a fan of U2’s War and The Unforgettable Fire back in the day, I thought I was being punk because I refused to buy or listen to The Joshua Tree until the mid-1990s, for most of the same reasons. I came to serious explorations of Kate Bush, Patsy Cline, Talking Heads, and even early Bowie embarrassingly late. Go figure. Ignorant and stubborn. The good news, I suppose, is that in this way, it’s like books or any other art form or truly, any interaction with beauty, big or small. There’s always more to hear and discover and take joy from. Enough outta me. Hope you’re enjoying your return to The Lung. I’m away from Bklyn for the week for a needed change of scene, up in Woodstock, and wishing that your show at the Levon Helm space here was tonight while I’m here. Thank you for sharing The Lung and your various journeys. 💙🙏
OMG I was one of those conformist punks in 87! Yeah in retrospect it was ridiculous how ironic that time was. I thought I was so smart. (NOT!) Of course we didn't get the irony song for a bit longer haha
IMO The Lion and The Cobra is a flawless expression of raw emotion. This was her DEBUT album, she was the PRODUCER, she was 21 and she was pregnant at the time of recording & mixing. I will never understand why this album gets so little credit, it was way ahead of it’s time.
Black Boys On Mopeds is 100% still relevant today and deserves a cover/update. One of the few songs I tried to convert to ukulele. I can't play guitar 😉
Wow… about 6 weeks ago, I watched Nothing Compares online from the Sundance Film Festival. I was blown away, and watched it over, and over again while I had the access. I hadn’t thought too much about Sinead in years, but I too revisited her old albums. I agree with someone else’s comment about Black Boys on Mopeds… that song gets to me every time. At present, Sinead O’Connor is struggling with the suicide of her 17 year old son, and her own ongoing mental issues. She is on Twitter, still bringing her raw emotion and honesty to a public forum. Still fighting for justice, and bringing attention to the system that failed her son. She says she’ll never sing again, I hope that isn’t true. She has a powerful voice….
Sinead is the most punk artist of the past 30 years... and I have given this a lot of contemplation. "Don't let the bastards get you down." -- Kris Kristofferson to S.O.
Around the time I was getting into The Lion and the Cobra, The Sugarcube's Life's Too Good came out as well, so I always think of them together as one big shining moment of incredible new voices and music for me. They are a glorious couple of records, and still are of course.
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit Turkey in Oct. 2000 with my mother and brother, and among the places we traveled to was the ruins at Truva/Troy. The entire time i was there walking in the different layers of city, each corresponding to a different era of Truva, the stark voice of Sinead O'connor singing her song "Troy" (e.g. when she bursts into "I Swear!!")........was in my head. A good memory.
I am a boomer who only occasionally listened to her music. Had a ticket to see her in Vancouver at her recent pre Covid appearance in Vancouver but bailed as I had a last minute conflict. During lockdown I borrowed her book from the library. It is extraordinary. over and over. For the first time in my long life I photocopied pages of a borrowed book (her descriptions of her music). Planned to wait to buy it in paperback. Had only one disc as I read it so was you tubing her performances of them. Immediately bought the rest. I replay her music over and over. On the loss of her son and her hospitalization I bought her book. Somehow is seemed a way of sending her my support. Pathetic thinking I know. If she only knew and felt how deeply she touches the vast range of those with whom she shares.
Sinead O'Connor has been vilified throughout her career, from tearing up a photo of the pope to refusing to sing The Star Spangled Banner to converting to Islam, and she has always, always stayed true to herself. After suffering the abuse of her mother and losing her in a car crash, she went on to create incredible art and live an incredible life that includes being physically chased by Prince after fleeing his house, as described in her memoir Remembering, and meeting Muhammad Ali, the person she says she admires the most. I was in college when I heard Mandinka, was blown away, and had to listen to everything else she sang. It's so cool to know that you were loving her then, too.
I agree with so many of the comments already added to this thread. Her music is raw and validating to do many of us.
I saw Sinead live twice in the 90s. Seeing her live was a truly earth shattering spiritual experience. Her voice live is more powerful than you can imagine.
When seeing her for the Universal Mother tour, she performed You Made Me The Thief of Your Heart from the In the Name of the Father Gil soundtrack. I don’t know that any live performance will ever top it. Just stunning.
She deserves so, so much credit for her contribution to music.
Different places, different people, similar experiences. One thing that bothers me these days is that there is just so much available, and so much of it is very, very good. A lot of it is pretty much awful, but so much is astounding. Sometimes it is just hard to find the time to devote to the marvelous stuff available now, and artists like O'Connor are allowed to slip by until something stops you. Neko, you were one of those people for me. And then one night "South Tacoma Way" played on the local FM station as I was driving back to Olympia from Shelton, and I realized that I needed to listen to this woman. And I have, for over 20 years. Not as often as I might want to, but there's so damned much to listen to...my favorite thing with Sinead are the various things she does with other people. The song she did with Shane McGowan was incredible; now, those two were punk, and they were singing about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen...
…and this is why I listen to YOUR music. Thank you for making O’ Conner a topic of discussion. “Lion and the Cobra” changed me the first day I popped the cassette into my ‘88 Cavalier. How you described it—- hell yes! That was it. “I Am Stretched on Your Grave.” I had never heard a woman, at this point in my life, say such things in music. I rushed to a dictionary to understand the word “maidenhead.” She filled my head with overwhelming imagery and deep surgical cuts to let my being begin to flower. To explore my own voice in film school— through photography and editing. I teetered on the precipice of bisexuality and never wanting anyone to ever touch me. She made me tough. She made me vulnerable. She gave me voice along with my pack of goth friends. To this day, I am grateful to have that album as a cornerstone of my being, just like 3 of yours that brought me farther in life as a spoken word poet and writer. ♥️🌱
crying emoji thank you. it's all I've got in me today, but thank you for this.
I love reading how this record worked its way past who you were trying to be and grabbed ahold of you with such fervor. You share that metamorphic effect beautifully. Thanks for writing these.
As I think I said when you posted on IG about this the other day, yes, O’Connor’s first two albums hold up so well. It’s kind of mind blowing. That thing with how she wails “Jerusalem” bowled me the fuck over when I heard it booming out of my friend Allison’s shitty boom box at the age of 15. I didn’t listen to either of the records for a long time and then they came back into rotation in the past 5 years, and they still have that concentrated punch and intensity that is one of O’Connor’s many gifts. “I Am Stretched On Your Grave” still pummels me. I love how you write about your own experience of musical discovery. (The observations on how much an openness and embrace of female, queer, and nonbinary perspectives are embedded into the music at a time when no one was really even using those terms is spot on. Even open bisexuality was controversial at the time; I found out firsthand that the conventional wisdom was that you were supposed to “pick a side,” like desire and love are some fucking football game. 🙄). Anyway, I’m no musician—writer here—but my biological father was and music is such a seminal influence for me, too, music always taps into an endless wealth of rich meaning, not to mention autobiographical associations. So musical discovery has been a lifelong pursuit and obsession for me, along with books, arts, and the like. I laughed out loud when you said you resisted O’Connor because of the hype. Despite being a fan of U2’s War and The Unforgettable Fire back in the day, I thought I was being punk because I refused to buy or listen to The Joshua Tree until the mid-1990s, for most of the same reasons. I came to serious explorations of Kate Bush, Patsy Cline, Talking Heads, and even early Bowie embarrassingly late. Go figure. Ignorant and stubborn. The good news, I suppose, is that in this way, it’s like books or any other art form or truly, any interaction with beauty, big or small. There’s always more to hear and discover and take joy from. Enough outta me. Hope you’re enjoying your return to The Lung. I’m away from Bklyn for the week for a needed change of scene, up in Woodstock, and wishing that your show at the Levon Helm space here was tonight while I’m here. Thank you for sharing The Lung and your various journeys. 💙🙏
OMG I was one of those conformist punks in 87! Yeah in retrospect it was ridiculous how ironic that time was. I thought I was so smart. (NOT!) Of course we didn't get the irony song for a bit longer haha
IMO The Lion and The Cobra is a flawless expression of raw emotion. This was her DEBUT album, she was the PRODUCER, she was 21 and she was pregnant at the time of recording & mixing. I will never understand why this album gets so little credit, it was way ahead of it’s time.
Black Boys On Mopeds is 100% still relevant today and deserves a cover/update. One of the few songs I tried to convert to ukulele. I can't play guitar 😉
Wow… about 6 weeks ago, I watched Nothing Compares online from the Sundance Film Festival. I was blown away, and watched it over, and over again while I had the access. I hadn’t thought too much about Sinead in years, but I too revisited her old albums. I agree with someone else’s comment about Black Boys on Mopeds… that song gets to me every time. At present, Sinead O’Connor is struggling with the suicide of her 17 year old son, and her own ongoing mental issues. She is on Twitter, still bringing her raw emotion and honesty to a public forum. Still fighting for justice, and bringing attention to the system that failed her son. She says she’ll never sing again, I hope that isn’t true. She has a powerful voice….
Sinead is the most punk artist of the past 30 years... and I have given this a lot of contemplation. "Don't let the bastards get you down." -- Kris Kristofferson to S.O.
Around the time I was getting into The Lion and the Cobra, The Sugarcube's Life's Too Good came out as well, so I always think of them together as one big shining moment of incredible new voices and music for me. They are a glorious couple of records, and still are of course.
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit Turkey in Oct. 2000 with my mother and brother, and among the places we traveled to was the ruins at Truva/Troy. The entire time i was there walking in the different layers of city, each corresponding to a different era of Truva, the stark voice of Sinead O'connor singing her song "Troy" (e.g. when she bursts into "I Swear!!")........was in my head. A good memory.
I am a boomer who only occasionally listened to her music. Had a ticket to see her in Vancouver at her recent pre Covid appearance in Vancouver but bailed as I had a last minute conflict. During lockdown I borrowed her book from the library. It is extraordinary. over and over. For the first time in my long life I photocopied pages of a borrowed book (her descriptions of her music). Planned to wait to buy it in paperback. Had only one disc as I read it so was you tubing her performances of them. Immediately bought the rest. I replay her music over and over. On the loss of her son and her hospitalization I bought her book. Somehow is seemed a way of sending her my support. Pathetic thinking I know. If she only knew and felt how deeply she touches the vast range of those with whom she shares.
Sinead O'Connor has been vilified throughout her career, from tearing up a photo of the pope to refusing to sing The Star Spangled Banner to converting to Islam, and she has always, always stayed true to herself. After suffering the abuse of her mother and losing her in a car crash, she went on to create incredible art and live an incredible life that includes being physically chased by Prince after fleeing his house, as described in her memoir Remembering, and meeting Muhammad Ali, the person she says she admires the most. I was in college when I heard Mandinka, was blown away, and had to listen to everything else she sang. It's so cool to know that you were loving her then, too.
Sinéad's music is The Healer.
I agree with so many of the comments already added to this thread. Her music is raw and validating to do many of us.
I saw Sinead live twice in the 90s. Seeing her live was a truly earth shattering spiritual experience. Her voice live is more powerful than you can imagine.
When seeing her for the Universal Mother tour, she performed You Made Me The Thief of Your Heart from the In the Name of the Father Gil soundtrack. I don’t know that any live performance will ever top it. Just stunning.
She deserves so, so much credit for her contribution to music.
Different places, different people, similar experiences. One thing that bothers me these days is that there is just so much available, and so much of it is very, very good. A lot of it is pretty much awful, but so much is astounding. Sometimes it is just hard to find the time to devote to the marvelous stuff available now, and artists like O'Connor are allowed to slip by until something stops you. Neko, you were one of those people for me. And then one night "South Tacoma Way" played on the local FM station as I was driving back to Olympia from Shelton, and I realized that I needed to listen to this woman. And I have, for over 20 years. Not as often as I might want to, but there's so damned much to listen to...my favorite thing with Sinead are the various things she does with other people. The song she did with Shane McGowan was incredible; now, those two were punk, and they were singing about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen...