I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss, Sinead O' Connor’s tenth and latest album, has just been released. After a career in music spanning almost three decades, the singer who rose to fame after her 1990 cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U has matured into an accomplished musician of diverse musical styles. The album is strongly influenced by the blues, demonstrated perfectly in track Harbour. Using haunting harmonies, the track develops from a slow steady beat to an angry, emotional climax with the lyrics ‘A broken 14-year-old girl hasn’t been allowed to tell/ What actually happened in Hell’. In complete contrast, Streetcars, the last track on the album, uses a simple piano and voice combination to describe the agony of love, whilst Take Me to Church has a rock/gospel tone. Although O'Connor stated in a recent interview with Observer that the album is ‘just an album of love songs’ and is hardly autobiographical, the raw emotion and tangible nostalgia both suggest that this album in some ways stems from personal experience. O’Connor changed the album’s name mid-production from The Vishnu Room to I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss, to show her support for #BanBossy, a Lean In campaign that aims to ban discriminatory words like ‘bossy’ that discourage girls from assuming leadership roles. Despite the fact that O’Conner has stated that she doesn’t regard herself as a feminist, she clearly has strong views on gender discrimination, having previously written a letter to Miley Cyrus to warn her about exploitation in the music industry. All in all, Sinead O’Connor never fails to cause a stir, and with its superb musical content, this latest addition to an already ample repertoire is quite simply unmissable.
See below for Sinead O'Connor's track Take Me to Church