It's mid-January and I'm still struggling to write 2026 on my posts.
Anyway, I felt like going with an underappreciated follow-up single. You see, Sinead O'Connor was best known for "Nothing Compares 2 U", her megahit Prince cover.
However, she didn't stop releasing singles. This one, the single that followed, was not a cover at all, but rather, written and produced by Sinead O'Connor herself. Outside of the US, this was a huge pop hit - and in the US, it made a splash on modern rock radio and made a ripple at pop radio.
It should have been a bigger hit here. It wasn't, because it was an angry song, odd for its both acoustic and electric guitar backing tracks. The song is a harder-edged pop-rock song trying to appeal to an audience who wanted another Prince ballad.
Which is a shame. Because this song is straight fire.
And when this song was released as a single, she was 23 and singing THIS hard.
You can see her performing the song with an acoustic guitar with a similar hard edge in 1990.
She's arguably coming off even angrier live.
If you want my PERSONAL favorite performance of this song, it's this much quieter but just as angry one from 2010.
You can hear every single lyric. I want you to listen to this one and feel every single word.
That doesn't mean she lost her edge. In this Parkpop performance from 2013, she's back to louder and harder - and angry.
But also, happier. And the crowd loves her.
This show is from 2020, and was one of her very last shows, as her tour would be shut down less than a week later thanks to the pandemic. She would literally only perform this song four more times before the abrupt end of the tour.
She still had every last bit of emotion and left it all on that stage.
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