Midweek Music Break: Sinéad O’Connor, “Take Me to Church”

[Image: promotional photo for Sinéad O’Connor’s 2014 album,
I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss. Click to enlarge.]

You’ve gotta hand it to Sinéad O’Connor: she will not be categorized.

Much of her identity — which seems to be the same identity privately and publicly — centers around gender. She takes her womanness about as seriously as it’s possible to take such a thing. But it’s a seriousness on her terms: yes, she likes sex; no, she does not like to be thought of as (un)sexy; she doesn’t play head games which might confirm your expectations; she likes playing with those expectations; she counts on your understanding; she resists being understood…

All of this is laid out in her new album (just a day old!), I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss. As numerous reviews have pointed out, right up front she challenges you: the album cover shows her in a skintight black-latex outfit, standing hipshot with an electric guitar in her arms, and her mouth drooping open, well, provocatively.

None of that is what really grabs attention, though — it all “means” something in the context of the songs. No, what really grabs attention is the wig: a sleek, black shingle-bob hairstyle (à la Louise Brooks) at that. She looks, as many guys would say (as I myself am about to say) smokin’.

It grabs attention because O’Connor never appears in public (well, as far as anyone knows) other than with her shaved head. It’s identified her as much as her gender has.

Here’s how a recent interview with NPR went, in part:

Linda Wertheimer: Tell me about the cover of the new album. I wondered why you chose to wear a long black wig and a tight latex dress, because you’ve always made a point about the sexualization of the music industry.

Sinéad O’Connor: Well, I don’t necessarily think that donning some hair and wearing a dress equates to being sexual. I think the fact that I have never looked particularly like a female — I’ve always dressed very male — is what I really had in mind. It wasn’t supposed to be the album cover; it was supposed to be a couple of publicity shots, which I wanted to do because I knew that it would draw attention. People would run the shots and go, “Oh my God, look at the sight of her with hair,” and they’d have to mention the album. Then the record company asked could they use it for the album cover, but originally it wasn’t meant to be.

I thought maybe it was a shout out to Cher.

No, it was really just a publicity stunt, if I’m 100 percent honest. I know what you’re saying, but at the end of the day, I’m clothed from neck to knee. It was more based on, “Guess what Sinéad O’Connor looks like when she makes an effort?”

The album cover photo doesn’t look feature a “long black wig,” if you ask me. However, the cover of the single — which seems to have been taken at about the same time as the black-and-white photo atop this post — does feature her in a long red wig.

Anyway, did you get that? She didn’t dress that way for the album cover because “that way” is sexual. She didn’t dress that way to make guys’ pulses race, or women’s for that matter. She dressed that way, at bottom, because she didn’t — doesn’t — want people to have any expectations satisfied except, maybe, their expectations of her music.

Well, whatever. It is great music — and the only Sinéad O’Connor album I’ve bought since the very first, back in the ’90s.

Despite what you may think from the title, the song featured below has little (nothing?) to do with her “complicated” past with Roman Catholicism… and everything to do with the evolution of the song’s protagonist (who may or may not be O’Connor herself). Expectations, right?

[Lyrics]