Sinead O’Connor is reinventing herself yet again with I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss, her best album yet. The first single “Take Me To Church” is a desire for liberation, redemption and renewal. (Photo courtesy Nettwerk Records)
Sinead O’Connor’s “Take Me To Church” is a modern day psalm and an anthem we need. Really need.
Forget what too much of the mainstream media has done: marginalize O’Connor by defining her by a few controversies I won’t list here. Yeah, she’s outspoken, but so are Morrissey, John Lydon, and Noel Gallagher. It makes one wonder: Does she receive the Mad Woman in the Attic reputation from the press just because she’s an outspoken woman?
So ignore the cage some of the media wants to lock her in. She’s one of the most talented musicians of our time. And she’s released one of the best songs — and best albums of the year.
A song that speaks to our times
I’m Not Bossy I’m The Boss lives up to the transcendent song “Take Me To Church” which was released before the full album came out.
“Take Me To Church” targets our times, our culture, our problems, our challenges — the same way that Marvin Gaye‘s “What’s Going On?” Bob Marley‘s “Exodus,” U2‘s “Vertigo” all did. It captures a spiritual snapshot of where we are.
I’m Not Bossy I’m The Boss is the latest Sinead O’Connor album to have spiritual themes. But this one is her most varied, complex and powerful yet. (Photo courtesy Nettwerk Records)
Let’s face it; we’re in a spiritual crisis. Every generation faces its challenges. But along with the challenges of our particular time, we have a spiritual longing for vision and meaning.
And we’ve been here a while. We’re post Sept. 11 fallout, post financial meltdown, lodged in environmental problems, immersed in a love/hate relationship with the technology that’s isolating us more and more, and trampled by globalization that’s turning many of the world’s workers into semi-peasants. The militarized police are on the rampage in Missouri over the shooting of an unarmed young black man. Have we gotten anywhere since O’Connor released “Black Boys on Mopeds” in 1990?
This has all created disillusionment and anger at religious and spiritual institutions and beliefs. Because many spiritual leaders aren’t addressing it.
But in “Take Me To Church” O’Connor tells us there’s a way out. We need to be liberated, spiritually lifted and community-minded. And she’s going to lead the charge if no one else will.
Going within for answers
She connects self-examination with spiritual redemption. There may be nothing more political than liberation of the self. If there’s any theme in I’m Not Bossy I’m The Boss, it’s about declaring an inner freedom from a culture trying to repress, categorize and marginalize our true selves.
It’s all the more powerful because O’Connor herself has suffered from this. Because she’s been branded in some media as a notorious figure, her recent music hasn’t received the widespread attention it deserves. Hopefully the sheer power of this new album will change that.
The beginning of “Take Me To Church” is a cry for renewal and for transcending limitations. In the opening to the music video she superimposes her face from her “Nothing Compares 2 U” music video with herself now singing “I don’t want to be that girl no more.”
Many of Sinead O’Connor’s albums have had spiritual overtones. She continues to be one of the most daring pop musicians. (Photo courtesy Nettwerk Records)
In the song, the singer is looking for renewal and liberation because she’s done “so many bad things it hurts.” And church is a place for transformation. The singer is looking for forgiveness and community, not churches of pain or guilt.
Later in the song she finds her spiritual power in the power to sing. Like the psalmist, she pledges to sing about all of the human condition:
“I’m gonna sing songs of loving and forgiving,
Songs of eating and of drinking,
Songs of living, songs of calling in the night.
Cause songs are like a bolt of light,
And love’s the only love you should invite.
Songs of longings but fulfilled,
Songs that won’t let you sit still,
Songs that’ll mend your broken bones
And don’t leave you alone.”
I’m Not Bossy is the most musically eclectic of her career. It’s as if she is saying that she won’t be pigeonholed in any way. So she conquers may genres — she even funks it up with the infectious song “James Brown.”
Searching for redemption
As musically diverse as it is, it has some common themes lyrically — like the longing for redemption.
The music video for “Take Me To Church” is a passionate performance video. It shows the 47-year-old singer is as relevant as ever. (Photo courtesy Nettwerk Records)
In the album’s opening song “How About I Be Me,” she sings “I don’t want to waste the life God gave me/And I don’t think it’s too late to save me.” In songs such as “Your Green Jacket” and “The Vishnu Room,” she’s looking for redemption through a partner. Is she on the wrong path? Or will she find it eventually?
If there’s any statement of purpose on the album, it’s in the gospel-bluesy song “8 Good Reasons.” In what will probably be the most quoted line in the album, she sings “I love to make music but my head got wrecked by the business.” Despite that, she realizes she has a purpose to keep singing. She found meaning to go on. It’s a stunning song of the spirit’s ability to rise up.
Toward the end of the album where you might expect a conclusion or redemption is the song “Where Have You Been?” in which the singer if under attack from someone. There’s an ominous line: “I saw darkness where I should have seen light.” Has she not found redemption after all? Is what she thought was the path to redemption just a trick?
This is an album that should not only shake up the music business but should shake up spiritual communities. How much could things change if “Take Me To Church” was played in Christian contemporary worship services all through the country? Or if spiritual groups discussed the restless but determined search for redemption that runs through the album?
Here’s the music video for “Take Me To Church”:
In the song “Take Me To Church” if Sinead didn’t add the line “I’m the one I should adore”, I would agree this would have been a great Christian song. But she (or the enemy used her) did add this completely unbiblical wording. God through the prophets, Jesus and the disciples repeatedly and clearly spoke/wrote God asks of us to serve/adore Him first; to die to ourselves in order to follow Gods will. We can’t serve two masters, either we will choose to adore ourselves/and our will or we will choose to adore God/His will.
Yes, I’m puzzled by that line too. It doesn’t make sense in the context of the other lyrics. I guess I was giving her the benefit of the doubt by thinking that there must be some interpretation of that line that I wasn’t getting. If I ever interview her I will ask her about that line! Thanks for the comment!
It is about finding good and beauty in ourselves first which will lead us to find God and love around us. Also, adore is a very strong emotion that usually leads to disappointment if projected wrongly, but hardly if it is toward person you know best which is you. I don’t think this is just about Christianity (no matter how good or bad Christian Sinead is); it is about “general” religion where God is everywhere around us and in us, so why not start there.
“The protagonist I’m writing about has had a profoundly distressing experience, from which she is ultimately able to not only salvage herself but give birth to herself, coming to the conclusion, ‘I am only one I should adore.'” -Sinead O’Connor
Note in the quote she leaves out the “the”… which completely changes the tone of the sentence, doesn’t it?
Some have suggested the “I Am” is reference to YHWH–yet, her statement above seems to negate the idea–however, she is the poet and poetry is often designed to elicit discussion and thinking. She certainly does that in most all of her work.
Perhaps she is intentionally being vague to make folks engage and think.
Eight years later we ‘ve see Sinead return to the “crazy woman in the attic” (or motel room in NJ) several times as she’s revealed continuing medical and psychological issues, had her children removed from her, converted to Islam, etc. I continue to hope her confessions of Faith in Jesus in the past were true repentances and the current mess is the Enemy ruining her testimony and stealing from her rewards in Heaven. I pray for her regardless.
I think she intended the line to convey a particular exuberance of the human condition. At times, we have a need to believe in our unrealistic parallel universe. That is to say, the universe where even flawed dreams and needs have a safe place to live.