We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Juju
Year: 1981
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To the extent that I have a favorite Siouxsie and The Banshees album, it’s probably Juju, because it’s full of guitar-based ravers like “Sin in My Heart,” “Halloween” and my favorite of all of their songs, the mighty “Spellbound, which kicks off the record with a big, dark — one might even say “gothic” — anthem.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2236: Siouxsie and The Banshees – “Spellbound”
Album: Kaleidoscope
Year: 1980
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One of the many bands that formed in the wake of the Sex Pistols, the original line-up of Siouxsie and The Banshees actually had deeper ties than most, as Siouxsie Sioux was part of the inner circle of Pistols fans — she was in the studio during the infamous Bill Grundy interview, and in fact, even kinda fake-flirted with Grundy — and in their very very first incarnation, their drummer was the future Sid Vicious. You know, the bad guy in Cowboy Bebop. (The guitarist was Marco Pirroni, who was later in Adam and the Ants, and played a lot with Sinead O’Connor.)
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2235: Siouxsie and The Banshees – “Christine”
Album: I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss
Year: 2014
In 2014, Sinéad O’Connor released her 10th studio album, the sardonically titled I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss, and not only was it her second focused album in a row, as far as I’m concerned, it was her best album since I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, with some of the best songs she’s ever written, like the harrowing “8 Good Reasons.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2234: Sinead O’Connor – “8 Good Reasons”
Album: How About I Be Me (and You Be You)?
Year: 2012
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After the turn of the century, Sinéad O’Connor went in a bunch of different directions: there was the Irish folk album, the rarities album, the reggae album, the collaborations album, the double half-acoustic half-electric album, none of which had any kind of impact on me, though I did like “Big Bunch of Junkie Lies” from the rarities album and her cover of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” from the half-electric (though if she was going to do a JC Superstar cover, I would have loved for it to be “Everything’s Alright.”)
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2233: Sinéad O’Connor – “The Wolf is Getting Married”
Album: Faith and Courage
Year: 2000
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As much as I loved I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, it was 10 long years before I connected with another Sinéad O’Connor song, much less album. Which, given how personal her music is, I’m perfectly willing to blame on me. That said, there was never any chance I was going to love, much less like the follow-up, Am I Not Your Girl?
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2232: Sinéad O’Connor – “Daddy I’m Fine”
Album: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
Year: 1990
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Out of all of the emotionally devastating songs on I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got — “Feel So Different,” “Three Babies,” “Nothing Compares 2U,” “Black Boys on Mopeds” — perhaps the most emotionally devastatingist was the penultimate song, “Last Day of Our Acquaintance,” which unlike most of the other songs, splits the difference between quiet acoustic dirge and big rock song.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2231: Sinéad O’Connor – “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance”
Album: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
Year: 1990
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On the short list of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Irish Chanteuse Division, “Three Babies” is not a song that you would expect me to love, on paper. After all, it’s a string-laden requiem about the three miscarriages she’d had, so I shouldn’t relate to it in any way, shape, or form.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2230: Sinéad O’Connor – “Three Babies”
Album: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
Year: 1990
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It turns out that 30 years later, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got is one of my all-time favorite albums. I mean, it wasn’t like I underrated it at the time — I’d always put it as my second-favorite album of 1990, just after the Pixies Bossanova album, but I’ve realized that I love it even more than that record.
And so, while we’ve focused on the singles that preceded it — “Jump in the River” and “Nothing Compares 2U,” it’s time to do a few songs from the album proper, like the second track, “I Am Stretched on Your Grave,” which combines two totally disparate forms of music into something totally new under the sun.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2229: Sinéad O’Connor – “I Am Stretched on Your Grave”
Album: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
Year: 1990
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It goes to just how great of an album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got actually is that its undeniable, world-conquering single is actually like my fifth or sixth favorite song on the record.
And it’s a tough one to write about: because 30 years later, “Nothing Compares 2U” is a basically a standard, so much of a standard that from the moment that it became a massive hit, Prince — who wrote the song, just in case you didn’t know that — basically tried to steal it back. To no avail, I might add.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2228: Sinéad O’Connor – “Nothing Compares 2U”
Album: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
Year: 1988
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I almost put Married to The Mob Soundtrack as the album where to find “Jump in the River,” because that soundtrack — to a Jonathan Demme film starring Michelle Pfeiffer & Matthew Modine — was the first place I ever heard it, almost two years before it turned up on the back half of I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
In fact, Sinéad O’Connor’s “Jump in the River” led off that soundtrack, which was closed by Brian Eno’s utterly transcendent take on “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” which if you’ve never heard, you need to hear it right this second.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2227: Sinéad O’Connor – “Jump in the River”