Sinéad O’Connor hit #1 with I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got Sinéad O’Connor

Released: March 20, 1990 Peak: 16 US, 11 UK, 114 CN, 11 AU Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, 0.6 UK, 7.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: alternative rock

Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Feel So Different [6:47] I Am Stretched on Your Grave (anonymous, Philip King, Chris Birkett, John Reynolds, O’Connor) [5:33] Three Babies [4:47] (10/20/90, 42 UK) The Emperor’s New Clothes [5:16] (4/7/90, 60 US, 31 UK, 40 AR, 1 MR) Black Boys on Mopeds (arranged by Karl Wallinger and O’Connor) [3:53] Nothing Compares 2 U (Prince) [5:10] (1/20/90, 1 US, 1 UK, 23 AR, 1 MR, sales: 1 million) Jump in the River (O’Connor, Marco Pirroni) [4:12] (9/17/88, 17 MR) You Cause as Much Sorrow [5:04] The Last Day of Our Acquaintance [4:40] I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got [5:47] All tracks are written by Sinéad O'Connor unless noted otherwise. Total Running Time: 51:09

Rating: 4.395 out of 5.00 (average of 19 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

Earlier Years Sinéad O’Connor was born in 1966 in Ireland. The alternative-rock singer/songwriter released her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, in 1987. The album would achieve gold status in the United States and sell two-and-a-half million copes worldwide, promoted by the singles “Troy,” “Mandinka,” and “I Want Your Hands on Me.” O’Connor seemed on track to establish herself as a college-rock artist, but then life got in the way. “Her stormy relationship with drummer John Reynolds, who fathered O’Connor’s first child before the couple broke up,” AM “would inform the mood of her second full-length album.” TB The Second Album That album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, was an unexpected blockbuster, topping charts around the world and selling seven million copies worldwide. It was a “raw, compassionate, angry album” EW’93 which find O’Connor taking “on everything from lost love to racism in Britain, and her yowl will shred your speakers.” EW’93 The “music matched O’Connor’s unblinking stare on the cover.” EW’93 The Title The album’s title came to O’Connor in a dream about her mother. A medium told O’Connor that her mother asked for forgiveness. Sinéad’s sister was not able to offer forgiveness to which their mother said, “I do not want what I haven’t got” because she realized she didn’t deserve their forgiveness. RH “Nothing Compares 2 U” The album owed much of its success to “the stunning Prince cover Nothing Compares 2 U.” AM The original was “an obscure breakup ballad” 500 that was just “filler on a flop album by the Family.” 500 “The stark cover…pulled listeners into the startling confessions and brutal catharsis of a complicated singer whose gorgeous voice conveys vulnerability and defiance in equal measures.” UT “It became O’Connor’s signature song.” 500 She “changes the fundamental meaning of the song,” RH bringing her “fragility and…ferocity.” RH Her rendition became a reflection on her difficult relationship with an abusive mother who died in a car accident five years earlier. The raw emotion also came through vividly in the video. It lacked the quick-cut style of most videos, offering a close-up of Sinéad’s face instead. She’s wearing a black turtleneck and singing against a black background, “so it looks like her shaved head is floating in space.” SH A tear rolls down her cheek at one point. The Album’s Tone “But even its remarkable intimacy wasn’t adequate preparation for the harrowing confessionals that composed the majority of the album.” AM “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got lays the singer’s psyche startlingly and sometimes uncomfortably bare.” AM She “weaves a stubborn refusal to be defined by anyone but herself.” AM She “approaches each tune like she’s poised for a confrontation.” TM “The album is almost too personal and cathartic to draw the listener in close, since O’Connor projects such turmoil and offers such specific detail.” AM “Her confrontational openness makes it easy to overlook O’Connor’s musical versatility.” AM “The album plays like a tour de force in its demonstration of everything O’Connor can do.” AM “The album jumps from string-drenched balladry and traditional Celtic folk to slick pop,” TB “driving guitar rock, and protest folk.” AM “The common link throughout…[is] O’Connor’s impassioned vocal delivery” TB and “the frighteningly strong emotion O’Connor brings to bear on the material, while remaining sensitive to each piece’s individual demands.” AM The Album’s Impact This is “one of the most politically, socially, and spiritually charged breakup albums of the ’90s, if not the entire 20th century.” SL She “expanded the notion of what a female singer-songwriter could be.” TM She “came along at a time when demand for journal-scribbling Joni Mitchell intellectual types was waning.” TM O’Connor “went for something more visceral: flinty, quick-to-anger songs powered by outrage and indignation.” TM “Aside from being a brilliant album in its own right, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got foreshadowed the rise of deeply introspective female singer/songwriters like Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan, who were more traditionally feminine.” AM Other Songs Here are insights into other songs on the album beyond “Nothing Compares 2 U.” “Three Babies” “The songs mostly address relationships with parents, children” AM – such as the song Three Babies about her three miscarriages SH – and lovers. The song starts “in a mood of naptime-in-the-nursery reflection, but as it unfolds, O’Connor gathers up considerable fury, reaching into her pained and plaintive upper register for a series of devastating cries.” TM “Feel So Different” “O’Connor’s relationship woes are invariably linked to her career” SL and her “burgeoning fame,” SL leaving O’Connor “bruised but determined, disappointed yet hopeful.“ SL The opening song, “the gorgeous orchestral pop of Feel So Different,” SL is “a meditation on said fame and relationship: ‘I am not like I was before / I thought that nothing would change me.’” SL It starts with The Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr, WK “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance” O’Connor’s “breakup with Reynolds is likened to a business transaction on the stunning The Last Day of Our Acquaintance,” SL with “its avenging angel vocal [which] remains one of her finest efforts.” RD Anger, sadness, relief, and despondency are simultaneously bundled up in O’Connor’s voice” SL on this song and “Feel So Different,” “as it is throughout most of the album. Her voice is flawless in its technical imperfections; she begins each song delicately but ultimately erupts with the ferociousness of a punk.” SL “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “Jump in the River” O’Connor “struck a nerve with her keening voice, her shaved head, and her tortured grandiosity in The Emperor’s New Clothes.” 500 “With ex-Adam Ant guitarist Macro Pirroni on board there is punk panache to [that song] and Jump in the River” RD “I Am Stretched Out on Your Grave” The “brilliantly audacious…I Am Stretched on Your Grave” AM features just O’Connor’s voice and drums. The “deep, almost religious incantation” TM took an anonymous 17th century Irish poem which Frank O’Connor translated into English and married it to “eerie Celtic melodies and a James Brown ‘Funky Drummer’ sample.” AM “Black Boys on Mopeds” “The acoustic protest-folk of Black Boys on Mopeds” SL is about two black teenagers who died in a confrontation with London police. SH The “lyrics now sound prophetic, both personally and politically” SL given the controversy she would create through high profile incidents such as tearing up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live: “These are dangerous days / To say what you feel is to dig your own grave.” “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” “The disc ends even more sparely than it begins; the a cappella title track brings the singer back to a place of prayer and hopeful redemption, but whether it’s God or a lover she seeks on her ‘journey,’ this is clearly the voice of someone who will never stop searching.” SL Notes: A 2009 edition of the album added a second disc of bonus tracks including “Night Nurse,” “My Special Child,” “Silent Night,” “You Do Something to Me,” “Mind Games,” “What Do You Want,” and “The Value of Ignorance.” It also included live versions of “Troy” and “I Want Your Hands on Me” (both from The Lion and the Cobra) and a remix of “I Am Stretched Out on Your Grave.”

Resources: AM AllMusic.com review by Steve Huey RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 650. EW’93 Entertainment Weekly (10/29/1993). “100 Greatest CDs: A Love-It-Or-Loathe It Guide to the Essential Disc Library” RH Rob Harvilla (6/2/2021). 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s (podcast) TM Tom Moon (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.: New York, NY. Pages 560-1. 500 Rolling Stone (2020). “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” SL Slant Magazine (6/30/2003). “Vital Pop: 50 Essential Pop Albums” by Slant staff TB Thunder Bay (2005). Albums: The Stories Behind 50 Years of Great Recordings. Thunder Bay Press; San Diego, CA. Page 253. UT USA Today (12/5/2003). “Top 40 Albums – the USA Today Way” WK Wikipedia Related DMDB Pages: First posted 5/10/2008; last updated 12/2/2024.