FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Sinéad O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
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AS we have more time to listen to music…
I think it is a good opportunity to re-investigate an album you might have forgotten about or pick one up on vinyl. In terms of an album worth buying, I would suggest Sinéad O'Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. You can find copied here; it is a wonderful record that contains so many incredible songs. I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got is the second album from O’Connor, and it was released in March 1990 – it has just celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. One reason why the album is so popular and legendary is because of O’Connor’s version of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U, which was released as a single and reached number-one in multiple countries. I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got earned four nominations at the Grammys in 1991; it won for Best Alternative Music Performance but O’Connor refused the nomination and win. I think my first taste of the album was Nothing Compares 2 U. I still watch the memorable video for the song, and it is heartbreaking to watch. O’Connor channels so much personal pain and emotion into a performance that, I think, tops Prince’s original. I think I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got contains some of the best material of O’Connor’s career; it is an album that barely has a wasted sentence or moment. I Am Stretched on Your Grave, The Emporer’s New Clothes and You Cause as Much Sorrow are stunning. At ten tracks I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
I am going to keep this feature quite short, as I want to get to a couple of positive reviews for I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got that highlight just why the album is such a classic. This is what AllMusic had to say regarding I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got:
“I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got became Sinéad O'Connor's popular breakthrough on the strength of the stunning Prince cover "Nothing Compares 2 U," which topped the pop charts for a month. But even its remarkable intimacy wasn't adequate preparation for the harrowing confessionals that composed the majority of the album. Informed by her stormy relationship with drummer John Reynolds, who fathered O'Connor's first child before the couple broke up, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got lays the singer's psyche startlingly and sometimes uncomfortably bare. The songs mostly address relationships with parents, children, and (especially) lovers, through which O'Connor weaves a stubborn refusal to be defined by anyone but herself. In fact, the album is almost too personal and cathartic to draw the listener in close, since O'Connor projects such turmoil and offers such specific detail. Her confrontational openness makes it easy to overlook O'Connor's musical versatility. Granted, not all of the music is as brilliantly audacious as "I Am Stretched on Your Grave," which marries a Frank O'Connor poem to eerie Celtic melodies and a James Brown "Funky Drummer" sample.
But the album plays like a tour de force in its demonstration of everything O'Connor can do: dramatic orchestral ballads, intimate confessionals, catchy pop/rock, driving guitar rock, and protest folk, not to mention the nearly six-minute a cappella title track. What's consistent throughout is the frighteningly strong emotion O'Connor brings to bear on the material, while remaining sensitive to each piece's individual demands. Aside from being a brilliant album in its own right, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got foreshadowed the rise of deeply introspective female singer/songwriters like Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan, who were more traditionally feminine and connected with a wider audience. Which takes nothing away from anyone; if anything, it's evidence that, when on top of her game, O'Connor was a singular talent”.
I first heard I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got when I was a child in 1990, and it had a huge impact on me. It still manages to elicit reactions thirty years after its release. If you do not have the album already, go and buy the vinyl or stream it if money is a bit tight. Rolling Stone reviewed I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got back in 1997:
“In some ways, the album’s most affecting love song is O’Connor’s cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which was originally recorded by the Family (one of Prince’s protégé bands) in an arty, overworked manner. O’Connor redeems the song with the best voice she has yet summoned on record — a voice that is lusty and unguarded all at once. Like a seasoned torch singer, she inhabits the song and makes its deepest longings seem personally, even exclusively, her own. “Nothing can stop these lonely tears from falling/Tell me baby, where did I go wrong,” she sings in a voice that ranges between pop fragility and blues melisma. In the process, she makes the song sound like a secret pain that had to be shared before the singer could be free.
But there’s more to I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got than bruised and angry hearts. Much of it can be enjoyed simply for its sonic surfaces — for the rapturous tune and texture of “Three Babies” or the way that O’Connor pits a half-Gaelic, half-Middle Eastern melody against a gutbucket snare beat and a low-throbbing hip-hop bass pulse in “I Am Stretched Out on Your Grave.” Some of it, like “Black Boys on Mopeds,” can be appreciated simply for its valor. A disarmingly dreamy-sounding folk song about the police-involved death of a London black youth, “Black Boys on Mopeds” takes on big targets — British racism, the hypocrisy of Margaret Thatcher’s government — and by the song’s end, O’Connor envisions leaving a country that is willing to sanction such brutality. In an album about personal suffering and transcendence, “Black Boys on Mopeds” serves as a crucial reminder of the ongoing struggles of the outside world”.
I am going to dig back into I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, and revel in the gloriousness that is Sinéad O'Connor. I adore her voice and her incredible lyrics. I think Am I Not Your Girl? (1992) is a fairly weak follow-up to I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got and, whilst O’Connor did release the brilliant Universal Mother in 1994. I think I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got is Sinéad O'Connor’s finest moment and, if you can, grab the album on vinyl and…
LET it move you.