Pages tagged “sinead o connor”

Some 15 years removed from the height of her commercial success and infamy, Sinead O’Connor now bears little resemblance to the girl known for her emotional outbursts on our television screens circa 1990. And it has nothing to do with her slowly graying hair, or the new lines on her face. At 39, she’s making music wholly for herself at her own pace. And her new roots-reggae album, Throw Down Your Arms, could just be the most personally satisfying and important she’s ever made.

Still in disbelief that it’s actually gone from dream to reality, the album, to O’Connor (pictured above, center), is not merely a reggae record; it’s a Rasta record; it’s a religious record. Featuring the famed Sly and Robbie rhythm section, the disc takes it name from one of five songs written and originally recorded by roots master Burning Spear, one of O’Connor’s idols, and also features her take on songs by Bob Marley, Buju Banton, Peter Tosh and others.

Paste: Tell me about the first time you heard reggae music.
O’Connor: I was quite small. I think it was around 1969. Toots and the Maytals had a huge hit record, 54-46.

What in the music did you find attractive?
There was something in the attitude of it, where he’s very bold and very naughty. And take into account that I’m living in a country where the religion is teaching me that to be a good person, I have to think that I’m shit. So I hear even in the tone of Toots and the Maytals, actually, that the opposite is true, which is the same that I see in the civil-rights movement, and the same that I see from Muhammad Ali.

The music would go on to have a deep, lasting impact on you.
Yeah. It informed why I wanted to be a singer. What made me want to be a singer was to communicate with God, and to rescue God from religion and this is what I saw these guys doing. This is how I perceived what they were doing. And they may not have perceived it that way, but I did. To me, when I heard these guys singing—regardless of the music in the background—the way these guys sang from their hearts with feeling, as opposed to the kind of 4/4, you know, the type of religious songs that are designed to squash all feeling [laughs]…

It felt like freedom to you?
Yeah. Freedom of the soul, exactly.

But it wasn’t until your time in London in the ’80s that you really explored Rastafarianism and roots reggae.
Right. My manager would play records all night, and among them would be maybe two or three roots records, and there were a lot of tunes where you’d hear scriptures in them, people quoting bits out of the Bible.

And that’s what caught your ear the most?
Yeah, even on Portobello Road, they’d be blaring [it] out of these big speakers, and suddenly you would hear parts of Psalm 1. And as I started spending more time around Rastas, it was interesting to me how these guys spoke about God, and how they perceived God, and how they talked about God, and how it was such an important thing to them that they would argue about it in the f---ing street. But their handle on the Irish Catholic was fascinating to me because it was completely the opposite of what I had been taught.

Sinead O'Connor: Collaborations—a newly compiled album exploring her work with a broad range of artists across many genres and cultures—will be released June 21.

The album includes O’Connor’s work with Bono and The Edge, trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack, Afro Celt Sound System, Peter Gabriel, Moby, Irish folk-pop singer Damien Dempsey, The Specials' Terry Hall and more.

Sinead O’Connor played the Virgin Mary in 1997’s The Butcher Boy, and, by God, she hasn’t forgotten it. But the artist who’s so often said, by deed, “Look at me,” now wants us to look away. She Who Dwells… is, she says, her final full-length album. “Since I no longer seek to be a ‘famous’ person,” she writes in a statement on the Internet, “… could people please afford me my privacy? … I am a very shy person, believe it or not.” Shy or not, she’s helmed a career that’s steered uneasily between submission to the Almighty and lust for a bully pulpit. She Who Dwells… reveals O’Connor’s balance of heaven and earth, and what a heady balance it is. Disc one offers rare studio cuts, including a number of effective covers: “Do Right Man” becomes a sacrament and “Love Hurts” an almost-jaded slow-dancer. Bells and echoes, deep bass and O’Connor’s soaring soprano … the results are often glorious. Disc Two, a concert recording including “Nothing Compares 2 U,” offers much of the same. An armchair theologist might wonder whether the Holy Virgin ever gets sick of being garlanded; a concertgoing cynic might ponder that O’Connor, unlike Mary, chose her place in the spotlight. In choosing to bow out, she’s left us a fine body of work, including this album. Just don’t tell her that if you see her on the street.

Between 1987 and 1995, Sinead O’Connor was a prominent and controversial presence in the music industry. Her unmistakable voice, shaved head and penchant for making brash statements about politics and religion made her a household name worldwide. Since that time, she has remained strangely silent, releasing only one project, the critically acclaimed Faith and Courage in 2000.

Now, among a number of side projects with notables such as Moby and Massive Attack, Sinead makes her debut on Vanguard Records with Sean Nos Nua. "Sean Nos" translates to "old style," the traditional Irish songs that are passed down a cappella. "Nua" is simply new. Old style made new.

"This is the record I’ve been trying to make for about 12 years," said O’Connor. "When I was on major labels they never really got it and never let me do it. Now that I’m not with a major label, I was able to make it happen. I think that I would like to make many more of them."

O’Connor encountered "Paddy’s Lament," an antiwar song, while living in Los Angeles during the Gulf War. Originally recorded by the Bothy Band, it tells of an Irishman who fled to America to escape the "murderin’ cannons" of his homeland only to be drafted into the civil war. "I like it," she said, "because the character who is singing the song doesn’t make any judgement against anyone who wanted to go to war but just expresses concern for their safety. It expressed the futility of war without actually judging it."

Two songs on the album are Irish language songs taught to Irish schoolchildren. They’re considered "willy-nilly little songs," O’Connor said, "but actually they are hardcore war songs." One of them, "Oro Se do Bheatha Bhaile," is superficially about the 16th-century pirate Grace O’Malley who battled the French and Spanish fleet. "Part of what I like about it is the narrator is a man, and the man is celebrating the return of this warrior woman back into her ferocity and her power. Really, it’s a celebration of females throughout our history."

More than a call to keep the culture alive, Sean Nos Nua strives to inspire. By adding a bit of rock and roll and illuminating the inherent sexuality in the songs of their forefathers, O’Connor hopes to challenge young Irish musicians. "Up until now there are so many Irish bands that just exist for material reasons. Nowadays, people make records just because they want to make money. I want to show [the youth in Ireland] the caliber of songwriting that has existed in Ireland so that they might have something to set their standards by."

"Something I wanted to achieve in this record is to bring back sensuality into Irish music," she stated in reference to the sexy traditional ballad "My Lagan Love." "The church in Ireland has really washed a lot of the sexuality from the song. Normally when people do it, they do it quite unreal and wishy-washy and you can’t hear the words, and so you’d never really know what it’s about. I think the songs are very powerful."