RIP Sinead O'Connor
and how The Lion and The Cobra helped create an entry into the 1990s
Whoever did the initial data entry for Sinead O’Connor’s 1987 album The Lion and the Cobra over at Discogs classified it as Soft Rock. How silly. At that time in my musical history I was doing a campus radio show called The Hanging Garden Party. I was slowly casting off my metalhead leanings, graduating into the industrial, ethereal, goth adjacent realms that housed The Cure, Skinny Puppy, Cocteau Twins and the like. I’d also developed an appreciation for the artier female artists of the time, like Kate Bush, Lene Lovich, and Jane Siberry. So when Sinead’s debut hit the playbox with its stark, faded portrait of her in all hear shaved headed glory it demanded attention.
The album roars out of the dock with a lament titled “Jackie;” a neo-Irish drone for a lover lost at sea that announced her heritage, her balls-out approach, and that VOICE! Still just twenty years old and in the late stages of a pregnancy, there was a certainty in her delivery that was tinged with just enough vulnerability to create deep tension in the songs. For someone so young her songs dealt with a classical depth of meaning and reference that bridged the personal and universal. On “Troy” she compares herself to the destructive force of Helen at the end of a relationship, a beacon of loss, transformation, and renewal.
On almost the opposite pole there were “Mandinka” and “I Want Your (Hands On Me),” a pair of songs with a pop funk step built in for easy club use and remixing, yet they felt all of a piece with the album. Right in between is “Never Get Old,” a song that slowly unwinds, starting with an Irish recitation of Psalm 91, a psalm of protection in times of worry, by Enya. It really is just a few images of quiet worry that suits the understory of the collection.
Young woman with a drink in her hand
She like to listen to rock and roll
She moves with the music
'Cause it never gets old
It's the only thing
That never gets old-Sinead O’Connor “Never Get Old” / The Lion and the Cobra
Aside from a shift in listening it was also an era when I was moving from vinyl to compact disc, and this album was one of the first couple of dozen titles in my new collection. As such it got many, many, many plays… and never really left the rotation for a long while after.
Her 1990 follow-up, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, propelled her even higher up into the popular music spotlight, winning awards aplenty for the Prince-penned “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Then in 1992 the controversy that came from her ripping up a picture of the Pope at the end of a live performance of a Bob Marley song on Saturday Night Live created a negative fog that would follow her for years. Subsequent albums never really put things right, and she was dogged by mental illness and excesses and misunderstanding that made her career all but impossible to maintain.
Her passing comes after a memoir called Rememberings was published in 2021. Alternately hilarious and tragic, it lays bear the turmoil within, and perhaps sheds light on her passing.
RIP Sinead O’Connor 1966 - 2023.