“There are songs that are concerned with the idea that the Gospels are indeed such, and the Scriptures of old are true.

“There’s an awful lot of songs about belief in the spirit world,” she writes. It was the psalms, as she put it, that “let everyone see the humanity of God, the vulnerability, the moodiness, the emotionality.”īut in the process of writing her life story, O’Connor realized that beyond the obviously religious “Theology,” she had written other songs with familiar themes. (One can see wonderful videos of her singing these songs live on YouTube). The most beautiful songs on “Theology” include “ Whomsoever Dwells,” based on Psalm 91, and “ 33,” based on Psalm 33. So she transcribed her favorite lines from various books of the Hebrew Bible, rearranged them, made some adjustments for rhyming and created a full album from them. He encouraged O’Connor to do the same with her songs. There she was particularly taken with a priest who taught her the Hebrew Bible he was able to “bring God off the page,” she writes. We learn that “Theology” was created after she spent the year 2000 studying theology at a university. Most religiously significant is her 2007 work “Theology,” an album, she tells us, “that I had wanted to make since I was seven years old.” She writes, “When I go out in a coffin it is the only album I am bringing with me.” Her first two albums are shot through with thoughts about death, while her later albums center on healing and forgiveness. There is much trauma in the story of her life, but O’Connor doesn’t wallow in it or ground her authority as an artist in it.Īs an adult artist, she took matters of the spirit into her own hands.

She also writes of the occasional sweet priest who offered her forgiveness as a child when she stole, lied or ran away. She describes her childhood with a pious, devout but horrendously abusive mother, as well as time spent in a convent with Catholic nuns-some of whom were kind to her, encouraging her as a musician, and others predictably cruel (she calls her Irish upbringing as growing up in a “theocracy”). Hers is made of serious stuff, tough stuff. But her memoir shows that her religious eclecticism is not the stuff of the lighter “spiritual but not religious” fare that is standard in consumer capitalism, with its predictable heroes and villains. She is famously hard to place religiously-a critic of institutional religion and a recent convert to Islam. What may stand out most to readers of America is the fact that despite O’Connor’s reputation, arguably the heartbeat of the memoir is her sense of transcendence and her longing for it, as well as the depth of her religious imagination since childhood.

Sinead o&#39;connor songs list

Sinead o'connor songs list