Sinéad O'Connor
Universal Mother

God might not be male but female; this is the belief of Sinéad O'Connor, convinced that perhaps only a woman (and consequently "her" God) can truly perceive pain and love (especially maternal love). This is more or less the meaning of Universal Mother, which was released in the fall of 1994, two years after the flop of the quirky jazzy cover album Am I Not Your Girl?, but also after the torn photo, the live TV criticisms of American society, the mockeries from illustrious colleagues, and the beautiful collaboration with Peter Gabriel for US. Those who, after so many controversies and the failure, expected a shrewd and awaited return to the reassuring sounds of I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, were once again taken aback: with this album, O'Connor seemed to deliver the final blow to her already precarious role as a successful rock star.

The album is structured in a peculiar way; it opens and closes with pieces (very different from each other) arranged in a rather modern style that seem almost to delimit, "protect" the true heart of Universal Mother, instead made up of tracks characterized by a simpler and more stripped-back instrumental framework, but not less impactful because of it. The start is stunning, after a brief recited introduction (not by her) on the role of women comes, like a punch to the gut, the splendid Fire On Babylon: a dark, magmatic pulse, a very elaborate base (close to certain electronic experiments of early Bjork) on which O'Connor, with a voice full of rage and expressive power never reached before, confides about the abuse suffered during childhood; certainly one of the most intense and beautiful pieces of her production, but the choice to use it as the first single turned out to be a commercial suicide, a piece too particular and atypical towards which many radio networks were reluctant, thus contributing to the album's poor sales.

Soon after, almost to calm us from the troubled atmosphere created by the previous track, comes John I Love You, a romantic declaration of love at a waltz rhythm (characterized by continuous tempo changes) that introduces us to the calmer sounds of the rest of the album where the theme of childhood returns, as in the delicate lullaby My Darling Child (dedicated to her son, who also carves out a brief cameo) and in the dramatic All Babies (melancholic as only certain typical sounds of Irish rock can be). Thus, between piano minuets (A Little Indian and Scorn Not His Simplicity), a heartfelt but subdued tribute to Cobain (the bare cover of All Apologies) and demands for respect (the punk nursery rhyme of Red Football), we arrive at the evocative and almost ecclesiastic In This Heart, sung a cappella along with a male polyphonic group. As I said, the end of the album is unexpected, and once fully absorbed into the album's mood, it returns to more contemporary (for the time) sounds with Famine, a harsh invective against English interference in Irish history and society, recited over a ghostly hip-hop rhythm that samples even (like Fire On Babylon) Miles Davis. To close the album is instead the hypnotic and vaguely trip-hop Thank You For Hearing Me, which concludes with O'Connor's thanks (addressed to an ex-lover or her former audience!?) for breaking her heart, thus making her a much stronger woman.

This ballad (chosen as the second single) was the only one to enjoy decent airplay, but this did not help to restore the fortunes of the album, whose lack of commercial success has often erroneously suggested, in the years to come, that the best of Sinéad O'Connor should be sought only in her first two albums. Instead, Universal Mother is probably her most mature and profound album, both in terms of lyrics and expressive ability, certainly not the most immediate but the unjustly forgotten one, and not just within her discography.