At the year's end, Sinéad found a new manager (Steve Fargnoli, a
former member of Prince's management team) and had gone a long way toward repairing her
relationship with Ensign's Grainge and Hill. They had heard a previous version of Sinéad's new record,
they thought that I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got was a great record, but nobody thought it would sell
much. Sinéad's second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, was intended to be a record about
stripping away artifice, it's all about honesty in the face of unremitting, unexplained treachery. With I Do
Not Want What I Haven't Got, Sinéad takes it inside for real, dumps the element of artiness that
prevented The Lion and the Cobra from living up to its expectations, and finds far more that is
applicable to the outside world.
I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got bears little relation to either of those,
landmark albums or to what was happening in pop music in 1990. Sinéad's ability to plunder the same
ideas she first addressed on The Lion and the Cobra: betrayal, spirituality, unrequited love, and
more betrayal-with more assurance and without her , debut album's occasional inscrutability.
Her
musical and lyrical language is much less adorned (i.e., less wordy), and that extra space in her sound
and her words gave her freedom and confidence. "Feel So Different," the first and longest of the album's
ten tracks, clocking in at just under seven minutes. It starts with the Alcoholics Anonymous-derived
Serenity Prayer and for a moment the first-time listener worries that he or she has stumbled into a
psychotherapy session by accident.
After the agenda-setting Serenty Prayer is out of the way, she is
accompanied by Nick Ingmam's sweeping string arrangements. A focused Sinéad begins to sing as if
she is indeed a different woman from the one who wrote, performed, and toured behind The Lion and
the Cobra. The point of the song's lyrics is that she is a different person, and Sinéad's performance
lives up to her words. At first listen, even a fan of the debut album can immediately sense lyrical and
musical growth in this manifesto., "Feel So Different" showcases Sinéad's improved control at
addressing lyrics to an imagined second person, an old folkie trick that Bob Dylan turned into a
rock-lyric imperative.
Up on I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got is "I Am Stretched on Your Grave," the
definitive James Brown beat atop a Phillip King melody of a Frank O'Connor poem. One of the two great
brave remakes on I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, "I Am Stretched on Your Grave" lets Sinéad
fantasize for five and one-half minutes about being the world' s first Gaelic rapper. Steve Wickham's
circular fiddle on the coda completes the circle. The track works well coming right after "Feel So
Different" by showing how Sinéad's new- found strength is the vehicle by which she has become able to
dig deeper into her Irish heritage and link it with her more newfound love, rap music and hip-hop culture.
Music on "Three Babies" bears a superficial similarity to that of "Feel So Different," with its
Ingram-directed strings and Sinéad's breathless delivery, but here the spiritual aspects are more neatly
integrated into both the song proper and its performance. Sinéad sings along with her lanky acoustic
guitar chords and august synthesizer lines (except for the strings, she is the only musician on the
number), thrilled by the words she recites.
"The Emperor's New Clothes" bas a dumb title conceit;
otherwise it is a perfect pop song. The first straight-ahead rock tune on I Do Not Want What I Haven't
Got, it is an ideal example of tyrical imagination presented as autobiography. The narrator is a woman in
the public eye with a young child, which sounds more than a little like Sinéad herself, as it is supposed
to. But when listeners reduce the song to straight autobiography, it diminishes the deftness,
resourcefulness, and professionalism of Sinéad's songwriting.
Because Sinéad frequently declares that
her songs are extremely personal, she opens the door to such interpretations. But in doing so she sells
herself short and invites her fans and critics to do the same. In the first verse of "The Emperor's New
Clothes," Sinéad claims, "And there's millions of people/To offer advice and say how I should be/But
they're twisted/And they will never be any influence on me." A literal reading of those lines would
suggest that Sinéad had an active audience in the millions (not true when she wrote the song) and that
she thinks the members of that active audience are foolish (probably not true).
Listeners should not use
her songs as an excuse to say they know something about her private life of what makes "The
Emperor's New Clothes" sublime is that it takes autobiography as its starting point and then, thanks to
its supple chords, leaps in a dozen fertile directions. Like "Mandinka," another song on which guitarist
Pirroni was a substantial presence, "The Emperor's New Clothes" unrolls an exemplary mix of acoustic
and electric guitars.
Sinéad's acoustic lines caress Pirroni's more aggressive electric ones, reinforcing
the similar relationship in the lyrics."The Emperor's New Clothes" goes out on a powerful, willfully
repetitious outro in which the band keeps steady and plays the chords harder and harder. The title of
the song does not appear in the lyrics until Sinéad repeats it four times and dances into the outro.
Because the title is a cliché--and a cliché with no resonance, at that-it does not resolve the song as well.
"Black Boys on Mopeds", which Sinéad plays alone, accompanied only by her Takamine twelve string
acoustic guitar and an overdubbed harmony. Arranged by Sinéad with World Party's Karl Wallinger, who
had developed into an ace pop dissector, "Black Boys on Mopeds" is a protest song whose beauty
enhances the ugly tale it tells. The song is essentially about the inarguable disintegration of Great Britain under its prime minister of
more than a decade, Margaret Thatcher, the Tories' Iron Lady. The song is primarily based on the
pointless death of Nicholas Bramble, a young man on a moped pursued by policemen who thought he
had stolen it. Terrified, Bramble sped up and was killed when his bike crashed; the consensus was that
Bramble would not bave been scrutinized had he not been a black man. Although an inquiry absolved
the police of wrong doing and the accident was technically caused by Bramble's own mistake, Bramble's
was a death that would have been inconceivable without the malevolent intervention of the authorities,
and it is emotionally right-if not legally right-for Sinéad to charge England as "the home of police/Who
kill black boys on mopeds.", also being the shortest song on I Do Not What What I Haven't Got, "Black
Boys On Mopeds" covers the most ground.
Sinéad was introduced to a song called "Nothing Compares
2U", by O'Ceallaigh, Sinéad's version was not as cluttered, or distractful as the others had been. Prince
himself applauded Sinéad's performance. In Sinéad's hands, "Nothing Compares 2 U" is as bereft of
hope, but she sings it with such phenomenal lung power that it is impossible to conceive of her as
someone as drained as she claims to be. If she can sing this hard, this intently, she was probably too
good for whoever left her She is a strong woman, one who will persevere.
" Jump in the River," the
Married To the Mob soundtrack cut of the previous year, is the next number. Sinéad's rough guitar riff
never develops into a full song, but this hard-yet-submissive tune succeeds on insouciance alone. lt
works well on I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got following the desolation of "Nothing Compares 2 U,"
providing both lyrical and rhythmic relief.
The next two songs are anguished originals. "You Cause as
Much Sorrow" is a sweet but intense put-down, as the singer herself acknowledges : " It just sounds
more vicious/Than I actualty mean/I really am soft and tender and sweet." Although Sinéad's incessant
exploration in her songs of her childhood beliefs will lead some to believe that she is addressing this
song to Jesus Christ.
In recent interviews Sinéad has talked disparagingly of organized religion, but at
the same time she makes clear that she is extremely familiar with the Catholic Church. Around the time
she was writing the songs for I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, Sinéad made her acting debut in
Hush-a-Bye Baby, a film that was part of the Dublin Film Festival and appeared on British tetevision.
Sinéad's role was that of a fifteen-year-girl (with hair; she wore a wig) whose friend becomes pregnant.
"It just shows some of the bad effects an Irish Catholic upbringing can have on young girls," Sinéad told
Pulse ! of the film, which had as its factual basis the story of Anne Lovett, an Irish girl found dead at a
grotto for the Madonna, clutching her dead baby.
The I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got track "Three
Babies" was originally written for Hush-a-Bye Baby, which leads to yet another interpretation as to who
the narrator is supposed to be. "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance" is the most pitiless song on I Do
Not Want What I Haven't Got ; it is the most honest, unsparing song about a break-up. based around
Reynolds's titanic drums, sets off quiet explosions as Sinéad puts down a soon-to-be-ex-spouse as she
fantasizes a divorce meeting in a lawyer's office at which "I'll talk but you won't listen to me."
The
listener never does find out what tore them apart, but it is clear that the narrator holds herself
blameless. The explosion of " The Last Day of Our Acquaintance " comes the magical fallout of "I Do Not
Want What I Haven't Got" . It is a closely microphoned a cappella track that opens with a big breath and
over six ravishing minutes retraces a path no less malevolent than the one in Pilgrim's Progress.
Sinéad
walks through the Valley of the Shadow, and emerges wiser and more serene. Not before or since has
her singing ever sounded so at peace, so untroubled. ."I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" is the album's
culminating manifesto. Its tale of a spiritual search picks up where the lead-off number "Feel So
Different" ended and comments on the intervening eight cuts, which upon reflection detail precisely the
sorts of spiritual challenges she alludes to in the title track.
Recorded in the last days of one of the
greediest decades through which Western civilization has suffered, a pop star says Enough Alreadyéad
has the luxury to sing " I have all that I requested/ And I do not want what I haven't got " She has
suffered trials, she has survived them, and all she wants to do is lead a quiet, normal life. The only problem
was that as soon as people heard the album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got,it was clear that never
again would Sinéad be able to lead such a life.
I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got was a far more
substantial and lasting work of art than The Lion and the Cobra, those clear heads also wanted their
salaries covered. But such objections were overruled when they saw the video that stalwart John
Maybury had directed for "Nothing Compares 2 U."
Maybury had shot a moody clip for the Prince cover
tune, tracking a forlorn-looking Sinéad as she walked around a park; gargoyles provided color and relief
For the requisite lip-synch shots, Sinéad performed in tight close-up, the camera reaching from her
forehead only as far down as the top of her black turtle- neck sweater. Sinéad was unavoidable,
all-encompassing: could not look away from the waif. The time came to edit the "Nothing Compares 2 U"
clip, it instantly became clear to Maybury and Sinéad that the tracking footage was adequate, but the
close-up footage was simply amazing.
lt had to be the basis for the entire clip. Filmed against a black
background, the minimalistic, iconoclastic shots were an affront to the excessive videos that clog MTV
and other channets. The tear that runs down her cheek toward the end of the song is not stage
glycerine; it indicates how deeply Sinéad believes in the song, how deeply she identifies with it, and how
deeply it inspires her Sinéad tries to keep her gaze fixed on the camera, but frequently she has to look
away, sometimes toward the floor, sometimes toward the sky.
One of these latter, heaven-directed
scans that Sinéad decided to use as the album/cassette/compact disc cover for I Do Not Want What I
Haven't Got. The cover still is a 180-degree turn from the tortured shot that graced The Lion and the
Cobra. Sinéad looks at peace with herself (it is amazing how different a shot can look out of context),
keeping in line with the title of the album and the driving idea behind it. "Nothing Compares 2 U" also
reintroduces Sinéad as a vulnerable performer to those put off by her Grammy-night aggressiveness,
and made a strong impression on those who had never before seen her.
Because the clip was mostly
tight close-up, her crew cut (she had briefly let her hair grow a bit) did not get the chance to alienate
anyone. A month after the single and video came out " Nothing Compares 2U " and I Do Not Want What I
Haven't Got sat at the top of Billbord's pop singles and album charts. "Sinéad O'Connor just made
things explode." Trans World Music Corp., a chain of 437 stores, reported that I Do Not Want What I
Haven't Got was the chain's top-selling album from the day it was released.
Chrysalis hustled to press
as many copies as possible. In the United Kingdom I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got topped the album
charts in its first week of release : not a rare occurrence in a music industry bent on responding fast to
a new trend, but still a noteable achievement. Sinéad had no such history behind her-just one good
record and a tremendous street reputation-which makes the out-of-the-box achievement that much more
startling.
Strawberries reported that I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got was outselling the chain's
second-best-selling title by a phenomenal ratio of five to one. "Nothing Compares 2 U" was the year's
first genuine platinum single. In one stunning day, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got sold more than half
a million albums, or nearly as many albums as The Lion and the Cobra did in a full year of release. The
success of I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got followed the same road Chrysalis traveled to break The
Lion and the Cobra, but Chrysalis had a running start and, since Sinéad was already a known quantity in
some areas, the company's promotion staff started far ahead from where they did the first time out.
At
every level, the video to "Nothing Compares 2U" was the strongest selling tool of the Chrysalis
promotion force. Album radio did not need a hard sell as it did the first time; by the time " Nothing
Compares 2 U" had topped the pop charts, many AOR stations had already begun regularly tracking
"The Emperor' s New Clothes'. without any prodding from the Chrysalis staff. Sinéad was now famous,
those in the record industry who did not care about music (i.e., too many of them) focused on her shiny
scalp and made that the new hook. Sinéad was thrilled and tickled that her music was reaching a much
larger audience, but she wanted her life to remain hers.
She began the first of two lengthy treks across
media-hungry America, Sinéad pledged to make an effort to remain normal. Knowing it would be hard,
she separated again from Reynolds. Sinéad began her 1990 American tour as an unlikely new star; she
ended it as the most controversial pop performer around at a time when pop performers were causing
commotions everywhere. Solo appearances on MTV Unplugged and VH1 New Visions solidified her
position as a changed, major artist, and her first few performances before sold-out theater audiences
were intense, affirmative affairs greeted with near-Messianic fervor.
During her show in Boston at the
Orpheum, the second date of the tour, two young girls in the orchestra seats yelled, "We love you,
Sinéad!" between songs--and sometimes during the quiet songs. Audiences seemed to know all the
words to the songs from I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got by heart. Sinéad was not intimidated by her
welcome, but she was careful not to take advantage of it or become a typical rock star. Sinéad and her
band rocked out on "Mandinka'. and "The Emperor's New Clothes'. and cushioned her during the
ballads.
Some nights the highlight was "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance,' which began as the
quietest of ballads and ended with everyone raving. As if the tune was not unwavering enough on
record, Sinéad played a longer version of it live. With the success of concerts, and record sales Sinéad
also got a chance to perform for the tv audience, Sinéad also got herself booked onto the May 12
installment of the formerly innovative comedy-variety series "Saturday Night Live" By 1990 the NBC
show had long lost aIl of the daring and spontaneityhad characterized its first few seasons.
In its
fifteenth season, "Saturday Night Live" was just a variety show., it was a variety show with an audience
in the tens of millions, so bands that were offered spots on the show did not turn it down. At the same time,
"Saturday Night Live" nabbed a host for the show on which Sinéad would sing two songs, a not-so-nice
Brooklyn boy named Andrew Silverstein who performed under the name of Andrew "Dice" Clay. In his
"Dice-man" character, Silverstein either-depending on one' s point of view-speared liberal sacred cows
or advocated the most vicious kind of hatefulness.
Clay's material (not jokes so much as incessant
put-downs) was homophobic, sexist, racist, size-ist, xenophobic, and, perhaps most important, not
funny. Clay, who has the misfortune of not being able to marry his hate to a single funny joke, is far less
interesting. His act consists of unformed attacks on groups who cannot fight back, like new immigrants
who work the overnight shifts at convenience stores, and AIDS victims.
Someone alerted Sinéad to what
Clay was all about, and she was appalled. She pondered what she should do it, but "Saturday Night
Live" regular cast member Nora Dunn made it easier for her On the Tuesday before the show with Clay
as host, Dunn decided she had to boycott it. Calling Clay's act "hateful," she told the Associated Press:
"I love 'Saturday Night Live' and I feel loyal to my colleagues, my cast members, and the writers of the
show, and I respect them very much, but I will not perform with Andrew Dice Clay and I don't want to be
associated with him and I oppose his work.
Sinéad's conscience left her with the only one course of
action. Skeptics argued that Sinéad had a number one album and single and did not need the exposure.
The two acts who replaced her, David Lynch chanteuse Julee Cruise and father-son rockabilly team the
Spanic Boys, were grateful for the break and did not think twice about the last-minute offer. After Sinéad
pulled out of the show,"Saturday Night Live" talent coordinator Liz Welch received a phone call from
representatives of the incendiary rap group Public Enemy, offering to appear on the show, then only
four days away. They were rejected out of hand. "Saturday Night Live" officials figured they had enough
controversy for the night with Clay, and for musical guests they felt it would be safe to go with relatively
unknown, certainly more mannered performers like Cruise and the Spanics.
A few months later, Sinéad
was still on a sold-out tour, Dunn had appeared in the critically acclaimed film Miami Blues, and "
Saturday Night Live" still faded away each episode after the first two sketches. As for Clay, he already
begun his inevitable fade into oblivion.
Days after she was supposed to perform on "Saturday Night
Live," Sinéad showed up at a soundstage on the South Side of old Chicago to appear in a video for "The
Emperor's New Clothes." It was a strong choice for a second single off of I Do Not Want What I Havent
Got. The video made for "The Emperor's New Clothes" had not captured the audience like that of
"Nothing Compares 2U", case in point, "The Emperor's New Clothes" would not be a major hit single.
The tour went on, consequently, Sinéad dropped Hugh Harris, the opening act for her concerts. Sinéad
got involved in other projects, such as Red, Hot, and Blue: A Benefit for AIDS Research and Relief.
Sinéad contributed a version of "You Do Something to Me," with a film shot by John Maybury in which
she wore a period wig that evoked both Veronika Lake and Jayne Mansfield. On July 21 in Berlin, when
she was part of Roger Waters's The Wall extravaganza. Nothing much came from the event, except that
Sinéad sang an undermiked "Mother," she played with former members of the Band Rick Danko, Levon
Helm, and Garth Hudsonz and she got her picture taken with her idol Van Morrison.
On August 24,
Sinéad and her band pulled off the Garden State Parkway in Holmdel, New Jersey, to play at the Garden
State Arts Center. It was a typical day of show. Before she was to go onstage,
Sinéad learned that the custom at the Arts Center was to play "The Star-Spangled Banner," the national
anthem of the United States, before each show. Sinéad was puzzled; then she was livid.
She demanded
that the anthem not be played. Arts Center officials told her she had no choice, but the truth was that
they had no choice. The New Jersey Highway Authority, which runs the Arts Center, allowed her to go
on so as to avoid trouble, but informed Sinéad that she was banned from the Arts Center for life. One of
the idiots defending the Arts Center was Frank Sinatra, who ironically performed there the next night.
In
fact, OI' Blue Eyes spoke in terms far less gracious or coherent. He really said, "This Sinead O'Connor,
this must be one stupid broad. I understand she said some things. I'm not even going to repeat them. I'
d kick her ass if she were a guy, she must beat her kids to stay in shape." Sinéad treated Sinatra's
outburst as dismissively as was appropriate, telling MTV News that Sinatra needed the press, and
suggested to Entertainment Today that "it's probably very important to Frank that he thinks the
American authorities are on his side."
Sinéad realized that she had to address the issue. The day after
the Sinatra concert, she told USA Today that she did not see what anthems had to do with her, her
music, or her fans. She said she did not mean to be disrespectful, and that she disapproved of playing
after any anthem, not just that of the United States. Sinéad' s well-reasoned anthem veto came barely a
month after sitcom star Roseanne Barr made fun of the anthem while "singing" it before a San Diego
Padres baseball game. Barr was joking, Sinéad was smart and serious, but that did not stop many from
likening their two acts.
Within forty-eight hours of Sinéad's Arts Center show, New York state senator
Nicholas Spano called for a boycott, and helped organize a protest in Saratoga, which Sinéad attended
incognito in a brown wig and baseball cap. On August 27, The New York post showed a picture of
Sinéad at the Grammy Awards with the page-filling headline "IRISH SINGER SNUBS U.S." Cathy Burke,
whose grasp of the issues involved seemed formed by Sinatra's phatanx of publicists and apologists
compared Sinéad to Barr in her lead sentence, and only quoted sources from the Highway Authority
which had embarked on nothing less than a smear campaign. After being scalded (to put it lightly) by the
press, Sinead just tried to keep the tour moving, with one change : she added the Bob Marley and the
Wailers song about demanding freedom, "Get Up, Stand Up,'. to her set. The Marley cover was a calm,
thought-out gesture, which means it had nothing in common with the simpleminded attacks on her a
week later.