Seems only fitting that I’m breaking the rules this month for Sinéad O’Connor, who was something of a rule-breaker herself during her eventful and sadly troubled life. I’m breaking two interrelated rules, in fact: the rule I have about not featuring an artist more than once in a calendar year (I’d already placed “John I Love You” in a playlist in April this year), along with the rule about not featuring an artist more than once in any given playlist (which of course breaks the first rule too). As you’ll see, I open and close this month’s mix with the late great Irish singer/songwriter, and it’s surely not enough of a tribute to the artist and human being that she was. The abrupt news of her death late last month prompted a lot of salutes that one can only wish had happened more thoroughly and supportively while she was alive. She had more than her share of challenges during her years on Earth but in some important ways she was a pure and searching spirit; and boy oh boy oh boy could she sing. Here’s what I wrote in April:
Sinéad O’Connor has one of rock’s most indelible singing voices, and this tender but intense song off her somewhat disregarded Universal Mother album shows it off brilliantly. Spiritually and psychologically complex, she has for decades presented as someone neither critics nor the mainstream public quite know what to do with; her career has in any case ricocheted through any number of controversies. But that voice. And let’s not overlook her capacity for writing some mighty tunes. Last year she announced her retirement from the music industry. And yet (there’s always more with her) this year she surfaced with a new version of “The Skye Boat Song,” which has been the theme song for the show Outlander; O’Connor’s impressive version will be heard during the upcoming seventh season of that popular TV series.
I stand by what I said but for one sad detail: it turns out that there was not, tragically, much more with her, or from her. But that voice: it would move me every time I heard it; it may well be my favorite singing voice in the history of rock’n’roll, which I know is saying a lot. But to my ears, she was that great. And an underrated songwriter to boot. Which relates to this: among the tributes I read, nothing dealt in any detail with her 21st-century output–everyone seemed stuck on “Nothing Compares 2 U” (a landmark recording to be sure) and the SNL/Pope photo episode (she was cancelled decades before that was even a thing). Usually the narratives merely made passing reference to how her albums didn’t sell well after that, which is such a reductive and stupid way to summarize the work of an actual artist. Me, I find Faith and Courage (2000) and I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss (2014) to be really satisfying, the latter in particular, coming entirely out of the blue, with Sinéad as confessional and pointed as ever, but also a bit cheeky (check out that album cover). Most of the songs on both albums were well-built and approachable. Music critics seemed not to like it when her music was too accessible, which is elitist nonsense as far as I’m concerned.
RIP Sinéad O’Connor. And the cliché in this case is very true: we really did hardly know you.
But yes there are 18 other songs here between the two Sinéad offerings. It’s a bit of a journey, as usual. Notes on a few of the songs can be found below the widget. Here’s what you’re in for:
1. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” – Sinéad O’Connor (I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, 1990)
2. “Little By Little” – Radiohead (The King of Limbs, 2011)
3. “24 Hours” – The Chefs (single, 1981)
4. “I’ll Always Love You” – The Spinners (The Original Spinners, 1967)
5. “Sinner” – The Last Dinner Party (single, 2023)
6. “Fall At Your Feet” – Crowded House (Woodface, 1991)
7. “Birmingham” – Randy Newman (Good Old Boys, 1974)
8. “Many Miles Away” – Kenny Drew (Kenny Drew and His Progressive Piano, 1954)
9. “Boots” – Noe Venable (Boots, 2003)
10. “Get Up Jake” – The Band (B-side, 1969)
11. “Do You Really Wanna Know” – Papercuts (Fading Parade, 2011)
12. “Terry” – Kirsty MacColl (single, 1983)
13. “California Baby” – Carrie Biell (We Get Along, 2021)
14. “Rosemary” – Suzanne Vega (Tried and True: The Best of Suzanne Vega, 1998)
15. “Tuesday Heartbreak” – Stevie Wonder (Talking Book, 1972)
16. “Small Town Crew” – The Brunettes (Structure & Cosmetics, 2007)
17. “Rhoda Mendelbaum” – The Doughboys (single, 1967)
18. “O Pamela” – The Wake (Testament, 1985)
19. “I May Not Be Your Kind” – Garland Jeffreys (Ghost Writer, 1977)
20. “Trouble of the World” – Sinéad O’Connor (single, 2020)
Stray comments:
* Apologies for that first segue; there was no good way–I tried and tried–to transition between track one and two even as I liked, more generally, how the one followed the other. I’ll ask you to overlook that particular clunker, even as it happens right at segue number one.
* There’s another song honoring a recent passing in here, and this was not planned: I had “Get Up Jake” slotted in the playlist a week or two before the startling news broke of Robbie Robertson’s death. I would not necessarily have picked this song as the one to stand in for his brilliant career, but then again it’s perfectly characteristic of the Band’s classic sound. It was recorded for the eponymous second album, but ended up not included, and released as a B-side. I think it’s a fine little song–better, perhaps, than a couple of the songs that made it onto the album. Don’t miss the excellent, twangy guitar work from Robertson.
* Speaking of fine songs not included on an album, check out Suzanne Vega’s “Rosemary,” which to my ears stands with the very best of her work. Hers is another voice I have always loved dearly–the plainspoken beauty of her tone combined with the acuity of her lyrics can be all but mesmerizing. And I’m particularly taken with the way she aspirates her “wh’s” (listen here for the word “why” around 1:38), which reinforces how clearly she enunciates her lyrics. “Rosemary” was released as one of two non-album tracks on 1998’s Tried and True: The Best of Suzanne Vega, which is an unusually top-notch “best-of” album. The record company released a similar album a few years later, entitled Retrospective, which updated the collection with a few songs from her 2001 release, the excellent Songs in Red and Gray. Either one is a great place to start if you’re unfamiliar with her music and might be curious.
* The Brunettes were an appealing duo from New Zealand, active between 1998 and 2009. Their 2007 album, Structure & Cosmetics, was released by Sub Pop here in the U.S. It didn’t seem to help their career too much in the long run but it brought them to my attention; “Small Town Crew” was featured on Fingertips in December 2007, back when reviews were presented in weekly threesomes. Other songs this month that have appeared here previously in a posted review are Noe Venable’s “Boots” (2005), “Do You Really Wanna Know,” from Papercuts (2011), and “California Baby,” from Carrie Biell (2021).
* AllMusic identifies the Scottish band The Wake as “painfully obscure but highly influential.” Sure enough, I’ve only bumped into them recently. I see that they are a band with a long and relatively complex history, and while their recordings date back to the post-punk ’80s, a re-grouped version of the band came back in 2009. Their most recent album is 2012’s A Light Far Out; a single entitled “Clouds Disco” came out in 2015 as a Record Store Day release. “O Pamela” has a forlorn, hypnotic momentum that keeps it engaging for me despite its length; the song opens 1982’s Here Comes Everybody, a keeper of an album for those in the know. But painfully obscure for everyone else.
* Randy Newman is pretty well-known on the one hand but, in my opinion, radically underappreciated on the other. His fluffy compositions for the Toy Story movies are one thing; the deep and quirky songs he’s written for his own albums are entirely another thing. He has specialized over the years in songs featuring unreliable narrators; his 1974 masterpiece Good Old Boys was full of them, including the jaunty, vaguely aggressive fellow who addresses us in “Birmingham.” Two other striking things about Newman, as a composer, are on display here: his unrivaled flair for orchestration; and his gift for mining a sound that hits the ear as unquestionably “American,” a gift he shared with a small handful of classical composers, including John Phillip Sousa and Aaron Copeland. And even his piano parts present like orchestrations; listen to the way the verses finish lyrically but feel incomplete until the piano swings into its run towards resolution. No rock music or pop music songwriters write like this; I don’t think they would know how. The song is a casual miracle.
* The Doughboys are another obscure band with a long and involved history. They hailed from central New Jersey and started as a garage unit doing covers of British bands like the Kinks and the Animals. They released two singles of original material during their initial run from 1965 to 1968, one of which was the curiously appealing “Rhoda Mendelbaum.” The band has had an unlikely second life since 2000, releasing seven 21st-century studio albums to date. Their most recent is 2019’s Running For Covers, on which they cover songs from other bands as well as their own; the version of “Rhoda Mendelbaum” found on Spotify is this much newer rendition. The version you hear on this playlist is the original. I should note that front man Richard X. Heyman has had a extensive solo career, including over a dozen albums to date, the most recent coming in 2022. He veers towards power pop on his own; some of the albums are well worth seeking out if you’re a fan of that durable genre.
* The Sinéad O’Connor song that closes the mix, by the way, is a cover of an old American spiritual, made famous by Mahalia Jackson when she sang it in the Douglas Sirk movie Imitation of Life, in 1959; the scene is available (of course) on YouTube. O’Connor recorded her version in 2020, to support the Black Lives Matter movement. She was quoted as believing the song to be hopeful rather than bleak, but it does take on an eerie resonance here in August 2023.
Fingertips 