The Specificity/Universality of Sinead O’Connor
To the extent that casual music fans (which is to say, most people) know her, it’s as a “one-hit wonder” whose best known song was a cover. It happened to be written by the legendary artist Prince, whose own songwriter demo of “Nothing Compares 2 U” didn’t get released from his vaults until after his untimely death, largely because her performance of it made it hers. Sinead O’Connor was a hell of a songwriter in her own right, and a screaming banshee and pure force of nature on record and stage (I never got to see her live, alas). The songs she wrote, including her best one, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” were brilliant, but so idiosyncratically about her that they’ve been deathly-intimidating for another artist to cover. In that stream-of-consciousness diatribe, addressed to an un-named “you,” a poison pen letter without a standard verse-chorus-verse structure, but with a refrain that […]