It's been years since you held the baby while I wrecked the bedroom...

86. Sinead O'Connor - "Troy" (Chrysalis, 1987)
85. Sinead O'Connor - "The Emperor's New Clothes"(Asylum, 1990)

So I've been trying to write a Sinead O'Connor post for a while, but I couldn't pick just one song. In fact, it was really hard for me even to pick two. Here's how it works: every time my computer, hard drive, or itunes crashes, I have to pick up the pieces of my music library. Every single time this has happened to me (upwards of six, I don't want to talk about it), I have rediscovered Sinead. Ultimately, this means I will forget about her again, and that usually happens around the time I get past her two great albums and into some of the...weirder...stuff. Stuff like showtunes, Gaelic Christmas carols, and rasta jams. Oh, baldy. You're so magical and strange and bald. Of course, like everyone else on the planet, I love that Prince song she covered that you may have heard but I won't mention here so The Artist won't sue us, but I'm partial to some of the other stuff. I was going to use "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance", but you shouldn't pick a song based on the fact that there's a video on youtube of tennis-playing animated lego characters dryly reciting the lyrics. So I chose "Troy" from her debut The Lion and the Cobra because the song pretty much sums up the tone of the entire album perfectly. Almost every track starts out barely audible and ends in some howling that puts Shakira to shame. That and the video is fierce. Note: that's the first time I've said fierce in a serious way. Dead serious.



And for her next trick? On her sophomore album she toned down the screaming, took on Margaret Thatcher and, you know, THE FUCKING POPE, and made a Prince song into her song. But the most fun on an otherwise heavy albeit brilliant album ("I Am Scratched On Your Grave" isn't the lightest of tunes) is "The Emperor's New Clothes." Who hasn't uttered "Maybe I was mean/But I really don't think so" in an argument? I'd use the word fierce again but 1) it would scare me a little and 2) does fierce do justice to something involving solid gold disco balls?

OK so maybe has never been the greatest dancer, but the banshee can sing.