The First Word that They Learned was Please

Now with an update on this week's Giant Brain Album Exchange Album of the Week, Mean Gene Okerlund!

This choice by Duff was unique because Sinéad O'Connor's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got is actually a record that I've tried to get into in the past, but ultimately gave up on. Even though I have a history with the record, it had been almost a decade since I had given it a listen, so our exchange was a good excuse for me to revisit it.

Deep down, I want to like Sinéad O'Connor because I think she's extremely cool. Like most, my knowledge of her came from the two most obvious places: Her cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U" on I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got and her ripping a picture of Pope John Paul II (JP2, for all of my Catholics in the know) on Saturday Night Live. I always thought the former was so badass and it's something that I've grown to respect even more with time. The Catholic Church's history of child abuse is firmly planted in mainstream discussions of the religion now, but not so much in 1992 (or 3, I didn't fact check #jschool).



I feel like so much of my relationship to older pop music was shaped by watching MuchMoreMusic while I was in elementary and high school. In addition to videoflows of music from the 80s and 90s, they would show tonnes of VH1 music documentaries, which would contextualize the bands I saw. Watching those shows was absolutely how I learned about Sinéad O'Connor and is also why I tend to only think of her in terms of her biggest crossover hit and her most infamous moment in the public eye. Not enough time in a superficial music documentary to really dig in, you know?

I deeply loved "Nothing Compares 2U" after going through my first breakup in university. In fact, me listening to the song on repeat in my tiny basement room in my shitty student house is probably the most melodramatic cliche thing I've ever done. Even so, every time I hear the song it takes me back to that time and I remember deeply the song resonated with me. For the entire duration of it, I felt present and it felt like I was being heard. That seems silly to say, considering I was 19 and didn't know anything about life or love yet, but I'm a silly person.

Of course, since I was 19 years old and still invested in skate punk, this version also got a lot of play:


At this point in my life, I'm willing to hear out claims on Me First and the Gimme Gimmes being much better than NoFX.

After revisiting the album, my opinion was more or less the same as the first time. I think that I appreciated it more this time, but it ends up being a little too all over the map for me. I wish the percussion on "I Am Stretched on Your Grave" was on every song. It feels like it's getting close to an interesting mix of Britpop, 80s dance, and folk singing sometimes, but then just when I get comfortable it veers into something else. Really, I want to like the album more than I actually do. I wish it was a cohesive thing that ties together all my expectations, but that's just not the case.

Maybe she has other ones that will do that? Probably not. Is it bad to limit my appreciation of Sinéad to her canonical moments? As much as I do want to steer out of the dumb a limited Western canon of rock and pop music, in this instance I tried and came back with the same answer. This reminds me of this scene from Lady Bird, which has stuck with me since I saw the movie and I think of all the time.