Ask a Sinead O’Connor Fan

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

Let’s get down to brass tacks: what is the best Sinead song of all time?

Bill P, Columbus, OH

Dear Bill,

In terms of popularity, “Nothing Compares 2 U” is her highest ranked song on Spotify (almost 218 million listens), which is way higher than #2, “All Apologies” (at 22.7 million). My personal favorite is “Troy” (#3 at 10.6 million), even though (and perhaps partly because) it gets kind of maudlin and overwrought at times. I also like that its lyrics allude to a William Butler Yeats poem.

Of course, it would be silly not to emphasize the brilliance of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Sinead’s biggest hit. Even though she didn’t write it, it’s totally her song.

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

Sinead was in the news recently, around some kind of tragedy. Can you fill me in?

Jack H, Buffalo, NY

Dear Jack,

Well, albertnet is not a news site, and while there is tragic news—her son died—it seems like that should be a private family thing, and really has nothing to do with her fans. I like her music, and her voice, but I really don’t know her as a person whatsoever and her non-music life has nothing to do with me (nor, I suspect, with you). Perhaps we should all just enjoy her gift to us—that is, the music—and leave the rest of her life out of it. I hope that makes sense.

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

“Nothing Compares 2 U” is pretty obviously a breakup type song, as she laments her lover moving out. And yet toward the end, she sings, “All the flowers that you planted mama, in the backyard/ All died when you went away.” What’s with the “mama” bit? Someone said this song was really about her mother moving out … is that right?

Lisa F, Seattle, WA

Dear Lisa,

The “mama” thing is perplexing. It’s tempting to think Sinead added that to the original lyrics, because there is a connection to her mother: when recording the video for the song, she thought about her mother, who had died in a car crash, and this is what caused her to shed tears. But the instance of “mama” is in the original song as written by Prince five years earlier. (As you may know, he wrote the song for this weird offshoot band called The Family, and you can hear their version here, though I don’t recommend it … it’s appallingly bad.)

It does seem as though the song could be written to one’s mother, though. The line “I can see whomever I choose” could be to make a former lover jealous, sure—but it could also be to taunt her mom had she discouraged the singer from this or that poor choice of mate and now isn’t around to complain. Meanwhile, the line “I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant” really makes more sense when sung to one’s (presumably frugal) mother; after all, why would a former lover care?

On the other hand, the word “baby” appears twice; calling one’s mom “baby” wouldn’t make a lot of sense. And what seems particularly incompatible with the mother concept are the lines, “I could put my arms around every boy I see/ But they’d only remind me of you.” What boy would remind Sinead of her mother? Probably not the kind she’d want to put her arms around. Suffice to say, the lyrics are ambiguous. Of the song, Sinead said (as reported here), “I think I’m probably similar to millions of people who loved the song, and we’re all people who associated the song with a loss of some kind.” Pretty general, eh?

But wait, there’s more. Prince’s recording engineer is quoted here as saying the song might have been about Prince’s housekeeper, Sandy Scipioni, who “made sure he had his favorite beverage, which was Five Alive, and she made sure the house was clean and that there were fresh flowers on the piano and that the socks and underwear were washed. That might have been the inspiration.” I’m glad there weren’t any lines about the crummy new housekeeper stocking Bubble Up instead of Five Alive and rolling up his socks instead of folding them.

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

I’ve been reading your column for years, and you’ve never mentioned a single concert, obscure B-side, little known biographical detail, or forgotten track, and as far as I can tell you’ve never even met Sinead O’Connor. What makes you think you deserve to write this column at all?

Scott B, Jersey City, NJ

Dear Scott,

Sorry to disappoint you. I never said I was some kind of maven or aficionado … just a run-of-the-mill fan. To be honest, I don’t know why I have a column either. I just kind of fell into it. Maybe I should hand you the reins.

Oh, but wait … I did see Sinead in concert once, at the WOMAD (World of Music and Dance) concert in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco in 1993, performing with Peter Gabriel (you can see a terrible bootleg video of it here). So there’s that.

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

Remember that whole flap about O’Connor ripping up a photo of the pope on “Saturday Night Live”? What do you make of that? Obviously you’re still a fan…

Sandra M, Tempe, AZ

Dear Sandra,

That caused quite the scandal, eh? Even in my (non-Catholic) community everyone was acting like she was some horrible, insensitive person. It’s interesting to point out that, per this article here, there was absolutely no flap over Frank Sinatra’s response, when he commented during a concert not long after, “This must be one stupid broad. I’d kick her ass if she were a guy.” And Joe Pesci said, on “SNL,” that if she’d done that on his show, “I would have gave her such a smack.” Somehow these statements didn’t appear to offend anybody.

As for my reaction at the time, I figured she was just trying to get attention. But this wasn’t a very nuanced position; after all, she was already getting plenty of attention. She was on “SNL,” after all, and had a number-one hit song and album. I didn’t grasp that she was simply using her moment in the limelight to advance a legit social cause, that of exposing sexual abuse of children in the Catholic church. Not that I was alone in being ignorant of this; as reported here, the “SNL” episode was nine years before Pope Jean Paul II acknowledged the abuse. Looking back, O’Connor seemed prescient. Who would excoriate her now?

Madonna, probably. (And you thought that was a rhetorical question!) Like Sinatra, Madonna got all hot and bothered about the “SNL” affair and was very public about it. As described by the New York Times, she complained in the press, “I think there is a better way to present her ideas rather than ripping up an image that means a lot to other people.” The New York Times concluded, “Madonna’s reaction may have been professional jealousy. After Madonna had herself gowned, harnessed, strapped down and fully stripped to promote her album ‘Erotica’ and her book ‘Sex,’ O’Connor stole the spotlight with one photograph of a fully-clothed man.”

(An interesting aside: twenty years later, in 2012, as reported here, Madonna lambasted another rising pop star, calling out M.I.A. for flipping the bird during a Super Bowl halftime show: “It’s such a teenager ... irrelevant thing to do … there was such a feeling of love and unity there what was the point? It was just out of place.” The columnist declared, “It’s no secret that Madonna hasn’t exactly been a great role model over the years. In fact, what M.I.A. did is precisely something Madonna would have done back when she was relevant.” I point all this out simply to highlight the contrast with how well Sinead O’Connor has held up over the years. Does anybody listen to old Madonna songs now? I hope not … they were lame all along.)

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

I bought my mother-in-law a glass storage container with a plastic lid. My sister-in-law set the lid down on a hot stove and it melted. I think my sister-in-law should replace the lid because she ruined it, but she says I should replace it because I’d bought it originally. What do you think?

Bette M, Boise, ID

Dear Bette,

I’m sorry, but this isn’t actually a general advice column. I’m really only here to weigh in on the musical artist Sinead O’Connor, so you should check in with Abby or something. 

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

 “Nothing Compares 2 U” is hands-down the best song I’ve ever heard about one’s lover moving out. That’s a very intense kind of abandonment, I think. So my question is, can you think of any other great songs on that topic I should be aware of? Bonus points if you can find one from the perspective of a man.

Kathleen Templeton, NYC, NY

Dear Kathleen,

I suppose I should mention “You Were Meant for Me” by Jewel, simply because it’s so popular, with 84.3 million listens on Spotify. And, okay, I confess, from time to time this song is a guilty pleasure for me as well. I especially like the bit about how she gets to make her breakfast exactly as she likes it: “I got my eggs, I got my pancakes too/ I got my maple syrup, everything but you.” (What pop singer uses the word “pancakes,” ever?) And when she gets to the part about “I break the yolks and make a smiley face,” I always think of a McDonald’s commercial for some reason. Suffice to say this song is not nearly as good “Nothing Compares 2 U.” The video, in fact, is totally lame … Jewel is wearing so much face lotion she’s practically dripping, and speaking of drips, the supposedly gone boyfriend keeps popping up, incongruously, like they’re still together, and he is extremely douche-y besides.

If you want a really satisfying my-baby-moved-out song from the male perspective, I highly recommend “2002” by Bob Schneider, from his first studio album, “Lonelyland.” Perhaps he even pays tribute to “Nothing Compares 2 U” because this song starts out in a very similar way: “The year’s 2002/ I do exactly what I wanna do.” He goes on to lament how badly he crashed and burned after his girl moved out. He’s not as specific about the duration (only saying, “It’s been a long, long time since you walked out my door”) but it must be years. All kinds of things have happened: he’s moved cross-country, he’s gotten hooked on heroin, he’s moved to Germany, he’s found a new girlfriend and gotten her pregnant, he’s been arrested … but he keeps coming back to how much he misses this original girlfriend, like he never got over her (which in a way is sadder than being heartbroken after only seven hours and fifteen days). “2002” is not as moving as “Nothing Compares 2 U,” but when Bob Schneider sang it live at the Independent in San Francisco in 2010, I was pretty blown away. (I’d never even heard the song, nor indeed this singer, before.)

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

It’s pretty obvious this isn’t a real column. Did you just contrive this to bring traffic to your blog, based on Sinead O’Connor being in the news?

Dana A, Albany, CA

Dear Dana,

In all honesty, I came up with this blog topic about a week before that news hit. I almost considered not writing it at all, since googling “Sinead O’Connor” and getting that sad news is not in my readers’ best interest, in my opinion. I have actually been thinking about “Nothing Compares 2 U” simply because, some months ago, I was casting about for a relatively mellow song to have in my head at bedtime (or more to the point, to replace the raucous one that was already there, because there always is one). For some reason, “Nothing Compares 2 U” really works for this … the rhyme scheme has a nice, calming logic to it, as does the structure, and the song can be slowed waaaaaaay down in your mind. Next time you can’t sleep, give it a try.

A Sinead O’Connor fan is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask a Sinead O’Connor fan,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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Rock Song Covers & Music Fusion

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and a suggestion of sensuality.

Introduction

My daughter’s violin instructor is taking leave for five weeks to tour with a well-known rock band.  If my daughter ever becomes self-conscious about playing nerdy classical music, perhaps she can look to this for inspiration. 

For this post I use the term “music fusion” to encompass a number of ideas:  classical instruments in rock music; covers of rock songs; amateur covers; cross-genre exploration; and fusion I’d like to see.

Classical in rock

I’m not a musician.  Though my mom wanted me, as a kid, to learn the cello, the orchestra teacher thought better of it.  So I’m just a listener.  Perhaps with a better trained ear I’d pick out all kinds of classical instruments in the rock music I listen to.  Watching a documentary on “Pink Floyd The Wall”  recently, I got the answer to a question that had long troubled me—how do they get that strange menacing backdrop of vague sound?—when I saw four cellos performing with the band.  I’ve also picked out some violins backing up Eminem songs.  At a Radiohead concert a decade ago, I watched one of the band members carefully playing an xylophone during “No Surprises.”

Sometimes rock music gets treated to a stronger dose of classical instruments.  A string quartet called “The Section” did an entire album of classical arrangements of Radiohead songs.  After reading some reviews to make sure it wasn’t just a gimmick, I bought the album, and I love it.  And there was the Metallica album, S&M, of a live performance where the rock band played alongside the San Francisco Symphony.  I haven’t heard the album, but one of its songs, “No Leaf Clover,” got a fair bit of radio play and I liked it fine.  And I love that Devo decided to do their own elevator music; the 30-second snippets I’ve heard of their E-Z Listening Disc sound pretty good.  (I'm not about to shell out $193.97 for the disc, which must be a collector's item or something.) 

Cover versions

Some years ago I was flipping through the FM stations in the car when I heard a song that was both familiar and not.  It was a cover of Radiohead’s “High and Dry,” and it sounded great—which intrigued me because though it’s a neat song, I’ve never liked it.  (To my ear, Thom York, the lead singer, sounds too whiny in this song.  Perhaps this is because he never wanted to record it anyway; in an interview he once said of the song, “It’s not bad ... it’s very bad.”)

But who did the cover?  Alas, modern deejays are apparently too cool to bother themselves with announcing what song you just heard and who played it.  When I googled “High and Dry cover” I discovered a dozen versions of this song.   I figured out pretty quickly that what I’d heard on the radio wasn’t from Amanda Palmer’s album of ukulele-based Radiohead covers.  I think the version I heard was by Jamie Cullum, but I’m not sure I want to shell out $13 to find out if I was right.

I also like Urge Overkill's cover of “Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon” whereas I could never stand Neil Diamond.  (I suffered an overdose of secondhand Neil Diamond at a moldy-oldies radio station where I worked, as a receptionist, in the ‘80s.)  I also love The Breeders’ version of “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” by the Beatles. 

Not all covers are good, of course; Limp Bizkit did what I can only assume is a sarcastic version of George Michael’s “Faith,” which strikes me as a kind of pointless exercise.  I mean, making fun of a mediocre song by squawking the chorus?  And this gets airplay?  According to Limp Bizkit's guitarist, George Michael hated the cover and ‘hates us for doing it.’”  Oddly, the copyright law concerning covers doesn’t require the covering band to get permission from the original artist, though royalties must be paid.

There’s a pretty cool website listing cover versions of everything, including “cover chains” (“a set of songs in which each song is a cover of a song by the artist who covered the preceding song”); the longest chain listed is over 300 songs long.  Click here for The Covers Project.

Amateur covers

Of course it would be impossible to count the number of times a startup band of aspiring musicians plays a cover at some tiny venue.  I also figure that anytime I sing at home, that’s a cover, and not a good one, though I take some satisfaction in my kids not always asking me to be quiet (which is especially remarkable when I sing Pink Floyd's “Vera,” which in my rendition is particularly maudlin).  Aside from quality issues, the most distinctive trait of the “home cover” is that it’s almost always sung a capella, unless a wooden spoon on Tupperware, or some foot-thumping, is employed (which works best if your audience is babies or toddlers).

Of course around the kids I have to sometimes alter the lyrics—I can't sing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" (of which I count five actual covers, by the way) because it’s about a serial killer, so I do “Maxwell's Silver Platter” (e.g., “Maxwell's silver platter made sure that she was fed”).  Other kid-targeted enhancements:  Thorogood's “Who Do You Love” is corrected as “Whom Do You Love,” and the final line of “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” becomes “that book by Vladimir” (since Sting pronounces “Nabokov” completely wrong, and the right pronunciation would throw off the meter of the line).

But enough of this childish stuff.  The best enhancement opportunities involve some thought and sophistication.  Here’s an example.  Say you’re tired of getting your brother’s voice-mail and tired of leaving boring messages, so instead of a normal message you rap Ice-T’s “The Girl Tried to Kill Me” into the phone.  Doing this straight would be amusing enough, but then you think, wouldn’t it be even better to refashion the song as a poem, presented at a cozy poetry reading by a tweedy professor, a dignified man much like your father?  And if he were to read it in a gentle, thoughtful, caring voice?  Imagine:

“Yo.”  [This spoken a bit uncertainly, as if the professor isn’t quite sure what to make of this word.]

“I met this girl the other night.”  [Pause.]

“Hype.”  [Spoken with a trace of wonderment:  what is this word, exactly?]

“Super-dope body and face, her mini-skirt ... tight.”  [“Tight” given after a pause, and without the slightest trace of salaciousness.  The professor is now adrift, and just sounding out the words.]

“Talking about legs and lips, mind-blowing hips,

Had to cross my legs just to look at her...” [Here the professor falters as he cannot bring himself to utter the vulgar word “tits,” and eventually substitutes:]

“Vipassana.”  [You hang up immediately after this, as if to suggest that the professor has suddenly realized that, though “Vipassana” was the gentlest word imaginable—one of his favorites—in this context it sounded lewd, and he has blushed and abruptly abandoned the lectern for his seat.]

Genre-bending covers

Some covers seem pointless to me—e.g., Billy Idol’s version of “Money Money” and the Lemonheads’ cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson”—because they’re too similar to the original.  They add nothing.  The best covers, I think, are the ones least faithful to the original, where the band doing the cover sees a way to present the song in a totally new way.  For example, the Jamie Cullum cover of “High and Dry” isn’t even rock—it’s something more like jazz.  (Not everybody likes this genre-bending; an amateur reviewer of a Cullum album complained, “Over here in the U.K Jamie Cullum is regarded as the saviour of jazz.  [But] he isn’t jazz.  It masquerades under that name in order to make jazz trendy and saleable.”)  Whatever genre this cover is, if it can lure me out of my rock/rap rut, I’m all for it. 

I can say the same of Amanda Palmer’s cover of “Idioteque,” which you can listen to here.  I expected the ukulele bit to be a gimmick (I mean, c’mon, a ukulele?) but the song is brilliant.  (For one thing, with Palmer’s clear vocals instead of Yorke’s mumbling, I can actually make out the words.)  I also cannot categorize the Cowboy Junkies and their great cover of Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane.”  Though their cover bears little resemblance to the original, Lou Reed reportedly called it “the best and most authentic version I have ever heard.”

Often a cover is done whimsically (though can’t be only whimsical or it wouldn’t hold up musically).  At a Bob Schneider concert many years ago, I was delighted to hear a rockabilly version of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Give It Away.”  I didn’t even recognize the song until about a minute in.  But later Schneider outdid even this feat with a cover of Aretha Franklin’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”  Only the choice was whimsical, though.  Had he played the song ironically—if he’d thrown in any hint of wink-wink, nudge-nudge—it would have been a silly and pointless stunt, but he played it completely straight.  Even his (male) backup singers came in perfectly (“Womaaan!”) and Schneider did a call-and-response thing with the audience—well, at least with the many females in the audience—and I can’t imagine any singer has ever had better opportunities with groupies after the show.

Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh, in a bio you can find here, acknowledges the value to a song’s creator of hearing a good, creative cover of it.  Of the Teddybears’ version of “Watch Us Work It,” he says, “They took Josh Freese’s drums off and put on a sample from something we did back in, like, 1982.  And I thought, ‘That actually is better!’  That was when I first really saw that Devo had something to absorb, as well as something to impart.”

Odds and ends

Some covers aren’t exactly covers, like the brilliant “20 Dollar” by M.I.A., which is really its own song but grounded in Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” (which has spawned some eighteen covers).  M.I.A.’s liner notes in say “Incorporates elements of ‘Where Is My Mind,’ written by....”  Of the twelve songs on her “Kala” album, six of them say “Incorporates elements of....”

In rap, of course, infusion of one genre into another via sampling is standard—like the guitar lick from Heart’s “Magic Man” in Ice-T's “Personal,” or the chorus of Aerosmith’s “Dream On” throughout Eminem’s “Sing For the Moment.” 

Music fusion I’d like to see

It's a pity, I think, that bands mainly do covers early on, when they don’t yet trust their own material.  As Mothersbaugh suggests, an established artist or group might really learn from hearing, or doing, outlandish covers (in the spirit of Devo’s own cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”).

Perhaps some bands are shy about covering bigger bands’ songs.  It seems that the more a song gets covered, the more likely it is that somebody else will cover it, as memory of the original becomes more distant and vague.  We associate “Hey Joe” with Jimi Hendrix, though his cover is one of hundreds, and the song’s original authorship is a matter of debate.  Richard Berry’s “Louie Louie” has become a staple:  all kinds of bands have covered it, including the Troggs (whose big hit, “Wild Thing,” was itself a cover); Swamp Rats; Motörhead; Led Zeppelin; Black Flags; Joan Jett and the Blackhearts; and the Smashing Pumpkins. 

In my perfect world, I could compel bands to do covers of my choosing, which would propel them into totally new musical directions.

Some music fusion I’d like to see:   

• Eminem doing James Taylor;
• James Taylor doing Eminem;
• My own dad doing Ice-T;
• Radiohead doing a rockabilly version of  “Optimistic”;
• Metallica doing Kenny Rogers;
• George Michael covering Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl (and I Liked It)”;
• Tom Waits doing Dido;
• Dido doing Tom Waits;
• The Rolling Stones doing a Devo song;
• Amanda Palmer covering Pink Floyd’s instrumental “One of These Days” on the ukulele.

Of course this list is incomplete.  I encourage you to list your own fusion ideas in the Comments section below.

dana albert blog