FEATURE:
Second Spin
Sinéad O'Connor - Universal Mother
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AN album….
IN THIS PHOTO: Sinead O’Connor photographed in 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: John Stoddart/Popperfoto via Getty Images
that was a moderate success sin the U.K. and U.S., I wanted to suggest that people check out Universal Mother and give it a spin. Go and buy it and investigate it. There is another reason why I want to focus on Sinéad O'Connor. The icon unexpectedly died earlier this week - and it sent the world into shock. Someone who fought for what is right; fought against injustice and, because of it, was often vilified and ignored. She reived so many emotional and heartfelt tributes when her death was announced. Because of that, there has been this new appreciation of her albums. We all know classics like the debut, The Lion and the Cobra (1987), and her tenth and final album, I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss (2012). Released on 13th September, 1994, Universal Mother has a lot of emotion and pain running through it. O’Connor trying to discover and explore what was under the anger of her previous albums. There are albums of hers that have received massive acclaim; a few (such as 1992’s Am I Not Your Girl?) that get mixed reviews, and those that got positive reactions but are still underrated. I think that Universal Mother is an album that everyone should check out – even though it can be quite a tough listen at times. I am going to bring in a couple of positive reviews. I did not do any tribute features for Sinéad O'Connor just after she died, as I did not feel like I know her life and music as much as I should or other do. There was so much raw sadness and shock together with beautifully-written pieces about her, I did not feel like I could match them or do O’Connor justice. I think that it is important, now, to spotlight her incredible albums. Many might have missed out on them the first time around.
Universal Mother is one of her best releases, and yet I do not often hear songs from it played on the radio. There are a lot of fascinating and insightful reviews and features about Universal Mother. I think, in 1994, there was still this perception of her being a trouble-maker or petulant. In fact, many contemporary tributes to her have been ironic, considering the press castigated and insulted her a lot. When she performed on SNL in 1992, she tore up a photo of The Pope. Protesting the horrifying sexual abuse of children by the Catholic church, she was mocked and condemned. Now, tragically too late, people owe her a huge apology – as she was right all along and so far ahead of her time! In 1992, she was promoting her third studio album, Am I Not Your Girl?. It did not get that many great reviews, as it was a collection of covers (mostly Jazz standards). 1994’s Universal Mother was the first album since then, and it was a reversal and sort of return to form – even though she never lost any form or brilliance! Maybe processing some of the fall-out from the SNL incident and a slight dip in acclaim, Universal Mother is a powerful and must-hear album where she is soul-baring and sublime. I am going to start with a review from Golden Plec. Reviewing Universal Mother in 2018, this is what they had to say:
“Artistic indifference is certainly something Sinéad O’Connor can never be accused of. We have watched O’Connor emulate, discombobulate, self-destruct and reconstruct throughout the years. However, it is her knack for tearing down societal taboos that is her plenitude.
One may think that Ireland has emerged socially since the late '80s when O’Connor first appeared on Top Of The Pops bellowing Mandinka, shaved head in situ. Certainly, we have come a long way from bearing the shackles of shame and silence instilled by the clerical elite, yet certain aspects have remained largely sacrosanct; that of the role of women and motherhood within our society.
Released in 1994 ‘Universal Mother’ is an unflinching exploration of female identity and motherhood in all its tender and terrible glory.
A migration from her previous albums ‘The Lion And The Cobra’ & ‘I do Not Want What I have Not Got’, ‘Universal Mother’ is a classic to behold not only for its deeply personal lyrics but for its timeless relevance.
Initiating the album is Germaine Greer’s uncompromising take on gender politics, whereby she contends “The opposite to patriarchy is not matriarchy but fraternity”.
This leads us into the first track of the album, the powerful and indignant Fire On Babylon that eschews the traditional narrative of the nurturing mother but hallmarks a destructive and painful relationship between mother and child.
Reverberating base and percussion remain throughout as O’Connor’s voice triumphs like a war cry; “She's taken everything I liked, She's taken every lover oh, And all along she gave me lies, Just to make me think I loved her”.
The album takes a decidedly different shift in tone with the lilting John I Love You. Pure and softer vocals, along with melodic piano showcase the nurturing and protective sentiments of motherhood. On the track’s conclusion, O’Connor cannily replaces the title with “Child I love you”, alluding to understanding that motherhood can be both maternal and fraternal in nature.
My Darling Child and Am I Human continue along this vein. Both tracks are cooingly lullaby-esque in nature, if not a little self-indulgent. A little like a parent gushing with adoration over their new addition, much to the boredom of everyone else in company.
Before the listener falls asleep, the brilliant Red Football launches like a kick in the guts. An anthem for the reclamation of the female body that is both aching and riotous, O’Connor’s voice demands gravitas with hallowing words “My skin is not a football for you, My head is not a football for you. My body's not a football for you, My womb is not a football for you”.
Accompanied only by a barely strummed guitar, O’Connor’s cover of Nirvana’s All Apologies serves as a statement of head held high defiance. O’Connor will not apologise for her position nor imposition.
The inclusion of the heart-wrenchingly tender Scorn Not His Simplicity, masterfully composed by Phil Coulter, adds another layer to the album. Her voice lends a renewed intensity to Coulter’s lyrics as she articulates an aspect of parenting we don’t often hear about, the perspective of a parent whose child is born with special needs. “See him stare, Not recognizing the kind face, That only yesterday he loved, The loving face, Of a mother who can't understand what she's been guilty of".
In sharp relief to the menacing and sombre All Babies is the acapella In This Heart, a song with ebullient harmonies that are finely calibrated on versus such as “There are rays on the weather ,Soon these tears will have cried, All loneliness have died, My love, My love, My love”. Soothing and healing with lyrics abound with hope for a better future.
Famine is a clap-trap rap spoken word piece that borrows the chorus from The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby. O’Connor savages the belief that the Irish famine was inflicted on us by mother earth and takes aim at patriarchal power structures and their impact on modern Ireland “The highest statistics of child abuse in the EEC, And we say we're a Christian country” she sneers.
With impeccable manners the closing track Thank You is signature Sinéad O’Connor. Poignant, haunting and candid in its sincerity, the closing song is force of thanks for allowing a woman’s voice to be heard and joining her on the journey.
Radical and progressive, ‘Universal Mother’ is a uniquely Irish album delivered with gusto by a uniquely Irish voice. As relevant in 1994 as it is 24 years later, particularly on the 25th May 2018”.
I am going to round off with a review from Rolling Stone. Reviewed upon its release in 1994, it could have received unnecessary criticism following a lot of the controversy still attached to Sinéad O'Connor. Instead, the brilliance and purity of the album cut through and demonstrated why she was so celebrated and important:
“On Universal Mother, Sinéad O’Connor tells us more about herself than we probably should know. It’s record making as therapy, the byproduct of feelings still only half worked out, a bundle of self-revelations left suspended, twisting in the wind. It wobbles between being an awful record and a remarkable one, and maybe that’s why it works: It swings so wildly that it never sinks into that deathly muddy middle ground.
More than half the songs on Universal Mother sound so tenderhearted, you could almost close your ears to the rage marbled through them. The most openly rancorous songs are actually the least affecting: The simmered wrath of “Red Football” is botched by an unintentionally goofy beer-hall-from-hell chorus, and the political rant “Famine” can’t match the charring intensity of “Black Boys on Mopeds,” from O’Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990).
But O’Connor isn’t just draining her wounds here. The record is raw but in a buffed, alabaster way: It’s built largely on delicate piano-based arrangements, with an occasional lanky groove worked in. What’s more, O’Connor fights against fixating too much on her own troubled psyche. A handful of songs deal squarely with the kind of cruelty a mother can inflict on her child (“She’s taken everything I liked”), but an even bigger handful reinforce O’Connor’s protectiveness of every child’s childhood. The lullaby “My Darling Child” threatens to turn treacly, but when O’Connor addresses her kid as both “me little street fighter” and “me little lamby,” you realize how desperately she’s trying to arm him for battle with a terrible world.
Junior psychoanalysts will have a field day with Universal Mother, trying to untangle lines like “You were born on the day my mother was buried” as if they were Chinese puzzles. But less important than what O’Connor says is how she says it. Her rage is distilled in droplets, finding its way through her tissue-fragile voice like blood seeping through gauze. She’s not falling apart on this record — she’s holding herself together — and it’s infinitely more terrifying that way”.
The heartbreaking death of Sinéad O'Connor revealed a couple of truths. The fact is that the music industry who hated on her and did not believe her truths about the Catholic church means she is owed a posthumous apology. So far ahead of her time, her wonderfully warm, witty and kind personality has been brought to the fore. This goes alongside a unique and extraordinary body of work that I hope will continue to be discovered and enjoyed for decades to come. As we say goodbye to a legend, I wanted to spend time with one of her albums that is not as known or played as much as it should be. If you can find a copy, go and snap it up and give it a spin. It is a work of brilliance from a phenomenal human that we are all…
GOING to miss so much.