Sinéad O’Connor’s 10th and final album was released in 2014 with the great title I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss. The title was a nod to the Ban Bossy campaign, which launched the same year and aimed to remove negative associations with women in positions of power.
This album picks up where its predecessor left off, serving up another batch of solid, confessional songs that make great use of O’Connor’s vocals. Musically, the tracks have a muscularity that at times hearkens back to her debut.
I was hoping Sinéad O’Connor’s final two albums would be worthy successors to her great early work, and I’m happy to say that her penultimate album, How About I Be Me (and You Be You)?, definitely meets the challenge. I’ll have to wait for tomorrow to see if the final one does.
This one was released in 2012, a full five years after Theology. She kept a pretty low profile between the releases, but suffered a nervous breakdown right as this album was coming out. It’s touching and bittersweet to read old YouTube comments on the songs wishing her well and hoping she recovers.
After two albums of covers, Sinéad O’Connor released her first collection of original material in seven years with 2007’s Theology.
The album, which as the title suggests is focused on religious themes, is split into two discs: Dublin Sessions and London Sessions. Each disc contains recordings of the same 10 songs, with the Dublin sessions entirely acoustic and the London sessions featuring a full band and string section. The first disc adds a 45-second, a cappella sung prayer, while the second features a cover version of ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’ from Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar.
Sinéad O’Connor announced her retirement in 2003, a year after releasing her sixth studio album, and dropped a compilation of old demos as a farewell offering.
That retirement proved temporary as she released her next studio album just two years later. 2005’s Throw Down Your Arms was O’Connor’s third album of covers. After tackling jazz standards and traditional Irish ballads, she now turned her attention to classic reggae.
Six years separated Sinéad O’Connor’s fourth and fifth studio albums, with Faith and Courage dropping in 2000, exactly a decade after I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.
O’Connor suffered plenty of personal and professional turmoil during those ten years, but she managed to emerge from it with what I consider her best album. A strong case can certainly be made for The Lion and the Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got — and those are her career-defining albums, no doubt — but song for song I find this one even better.
Meet Me In Montauk 