Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra
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Written By: Moti Kupfer
Album review - Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra
Release date - 5.10.1987
Record company - Chrysalis
Genre - Pop rock / art rock
"I don't know no shame, I feel no pain, I can't see the flame, But I do know Man-din-ka" sings Sinead O'Connor in the album's second single "Mandinka", that best express the storms and contradictions that have been going on in her as a person since the dawn of her childhood.
Already at the age of 20, the young Sinead sang about the Mandinka that she knows and knows, so then she knew no shame and pain, later we all saw the pain bursting from within, but at this moment she sang with confidence with "her hands on the wheel", when she produced her debut album "The Lion and the Cobra" (while pregnant), which was released on 5.10.87 in Europe and 04.11.1987 in the US.
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor was born in Glenageary, County Dublin. She was named Sinead after Sinead de Valera, the wife of Irish President Éamon de Valera, Mary after the mother of the doctor who helped deliver her, and Bernadette after Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, a saint of the Catholic Church.
Her parents divorced when she was 8 years old, and she moved in with her mother along with her two older brothers. She later claimed that her mother drank a lot, and as a result, she also behaved violently towards little Sinead. Her life was led against the backdrop of a difficult custody battle between her mother and father, a battle that became famous in the conservative Ireland of those days.
At the age of 15, following her absence from school and her arrest for shoplifting, Sinead was sent to the Magdalene Home, a shelter to which girls who had strayed from the right path were sent, sometimes against their will.
Exactly There, Sinead found the peace of mind she needed, and she strengthened her writing and musical skills during the 18 months she lived there.
One of the volunteers at the shelter was the sister of Paul Byrne, drummer for the Irish rock band "Nua Nua", who had heard O'Connor perform Barbra Streisand's "Evergreen." O'Connor recorded a song with "Nua Nua", but at the age of 15 they felt she was not yet ready to join them.
In the summer of 1984, Sinead placed an ad in a newspaper and joined several musicians to form the band "Ton Ton Macoute" (named after an Italian myth about zombies). The band played music influenced by mysticism, world music, and witchcraft.
On 10 February 1985, Sinead's mother was killed in a car accident, and Sinead left the band, but she managed to leave an impression on the music industry as the singer of "Ton Ton Macoute" and was signed to Ensign Records, while at the same time she worked with an experienced manager who had previously worked with the band "U2".
O'Connor began recording her debut album during 1986, but the recordings were delayed due to serious disagreements with her producer, and at the same time she became pregnant by drummer John Reynolds. The record company pressured her to have an abortion, but a strong-willed and opinionated woman like Sinead did not fold. With the approval of her manager, O'Connor began to produce her debut album herself.
More than once, her big mouth got her into trouble, one of which was when she defended the IRA, the Irish Republican Army that tried to assassinate Margaret Thatcher during those years. She later retracted the comments she made, claiming that she was too young to properly understand the tense situation in Ireland.
After taking sole responsibility for producing the album, O'Connor turned her voice into a Master Fader. She sang into her personal recording device, measuring when her voice is in the green color area, which is a good recording of her singing, when it is in the yellow color area, which is on the verge of distortion, and when it is in the red area, which means distortion.
O'Connor's debut album demands continuous listening, and tries to connect the listener to her discomfort, to her desire to constantly create active relationships with the listener, ones that will make him listen attentively to every second of the album, and not fall into banality where song after song sounds the same, and with her mezzo-soprano voice she certainly manages to do so.
The album combines rock and pop and takes the listener into Sinead's dark and quiet moments on the one hand, and on the other it soothes and puts the listener in a positive atmosphere like the state of the sky after a storm, in between you can hear artists who came to Sinead's aid, such as the Irish singer Enya, "Japan's" guitarist Rob Dean and rapper MC Lyte.
One of the only songs on the album that Sinead admitted was autobiographical was "Troy," written about her abusive mother, and in general, Sinead on her debut album is a woman traveling the world between hope and despair while everyone around her doesn't understand her. "Mandinka", which became her biggest hit, actually refers to the Mandinka tribe, which is mainly found in West Africa, about which Sinead read in Alex Haley's book "Roots." "To know what the song is about, you have to read the book," Sinead noted.
Many of Sinead O'Connor's songs are about her life, but "Jackie" is a story she made up about a ghost who is condemned to spend eternity searching for her husband. She explained this in her memoir, "Rememberings": "I had seen a play on TV about a very old lady in Scotland who was coming toward her own death. She would spend her days looking through her curtained window, waiting to see her long-gone husband return from a fishing trip he’d taken 40 years earlier and during which he’d drowned. They had been childless, and she never met anyone else. This inspired me, somehow, to write ‘Jackie,’ about a character who is wandering the beach waiting for the return of someone dead. In my song, the narrator is a ghost."
On those days Sinead wrote a lot about sacred and spiritual themes. Her debut album contains biblical references throughout (the album's title itself is taken from a quote from the New Testament) and includes this funky song "Jerusalem" about Israel's capital.
Eight years later, on June 13, 1995, O'Connor visited Israel, performed at the "Sultan's Pool", and was confronted by photographers who disturbed her while she was visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City.
The album cover shows O'Connor with her mouth open, her eyebrows arched, and her shoulders thrown back slightly in a look that seemed a bit angry and provocative at the time.
O'Connor recalls that the photographer encouraged her to react naturally when the cameras were flashing, she looked like she was screaming, when in fact she was singing."
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music