Rocktrospectiva: The Empowering "Universal Mother " Turns 30

 

Released on 13 September 1994, "Universal Mother" was Sinéad O'Connor fourth studio album, considered as the first attempt to try to expose what was really underneath a lot of the anger of the other records, the album spawned three singles "Thank You For Hearing Me", "Fire On Babylon" & "Famine".

 

The album was a catartic escape for O'Connor, in where she tells us more about herself than we probably should know. It’s a therapy record, sometimes twisting between an awful and a remarkable one, and probably that's why many people love it. In 1993, O'Connor started taking singing lessons in the style of bel canto. This inspired her to talk about the things that she really wanted to talk about.

 

 Tracks such as "Germaine" is a recording of feminist Germaine Greer speaking about cooperation as an alternative to patriarchy, "Am I a Human?" is by O'Connor's son Jake, recorded when he was a child,"Famine" is a hip hop track about the Great Famine and how it impacted Ireland, "Thank You for Hearing Me", was written about O'Connor's breakup with musician Peter Gabriel and features a trance-like backing track.

 

More than half the songs on the record sound so tenderhearted, you could almost close your ears to the rage marbled through them, the simmered wrath of "Red Football"  the political rant "Famine" But O’Connor isn’t just draining her wounds here. The record is raw but in a buffed way: It’s built largely on delicate piano-based arrangements, with an occasional lanky groove worked in. What’s more, O’Connor fights against fixating too much on her own troubled psyche. 

 

A handful of songs deal squarely with the kind of cruelty a mother can inflict on her child "She’s Taken Everything I Liked", but an even bigger handful reinforce O’Connor’s protectiveness of every child’s childhood. The lullaby "My Darling Child" threatens to turn treacly, but when O’Connor addresses her kid as both “me little street fighter” and “me little lamby,” you realize how desperately she’s trying to arm him for battle with a terrible world.

 

The album had divided critical opinion, O'Connor explores the uncharted depths of the real loveless family traumas that mainstream, predominantly male, rock music tends to avoid, and O'Connor "can still sing like an angel but she also sometimes writes lyrics like an emotional dyslexic, some others called the album as her best to date, considered it as an album for therapy because its tenderhearted and protective. 

 

Universal Mothers Track List: 

 

1. Germaine 

2. Fire On Babylon

3. John I Love You

4. My Darling Child

5. Am I A Human

6. Red Football

7. All Apologies

8. A Perfect Indian

9. Scorn Not his Simplicity 

10. All Babies 

11. In This Heart

12. Tiny Grief Song

13. Famine 

14. Thank You Hearing Me