My song of the day is “Black Boys on Mopeds’ by Sinead O’Connor off her 1990 album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.” It’s a loving and moving protest song that sings softly while carrying a big stick.
The voice of this Irish singer/songwriter, who was cited by the Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan as a primary influence, is unforgettable. It’s thin and wavering like a flute, but is also capable of a scream, growl and the occasional foray from its soprano/alto wheelhouse into the realm of coloratura.
O’Connor clambers along on a multi-octave range and switches mood and tone with agility. I attribute this nimbleness to growing up speaking with an Irish accent, a swinging, see-sawing lilt that–to my American ears– makes pleasantries sound harmonic.
There’s also the fact that Sinead O’Connor learned and sang songs in Irish Gaelic. It’s an emotive language, demanding the ability to keen, wail, laugh and sigh, sometimes in the same sentence.
Occasionally, O’Connor loses pitch all together, as though she has fallen , for a moment, off the face of the pentatonic scale. It happens when she wants to emphasize an emotion or is, like a method actor, gripped by pain and rage.
You can hear it in the way she hickups while uttering her fiercest, most protective line: “And I love my boy”
And what are the words she’s uttering? Many are prophetic.
Black Boys on Mopeds by Sinead O’Connor
Margaret Thatcher on TV
Shocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing
It seems strange that she should be offended
The same orders are given by her
I’ve said this before now
You said I was childish and you’ll say it now
Remember what I told you
If they hated me they will hate you
England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses
It’s the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds
And I love my boy and that’s why I’m leaving
I don’t want him to be aware that there’s
Any such thing as grieving
Young mother down at Smithfield
Five a.m., looking for food for her kids
In her arms she holds three cold babies
And the first word that they learned was please
These are dangerous days
To say what you feel is to dig your own grave
Remember what I told you
If you were of the world they would love you
England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses
It’s the home of police who kill blacks boys on mopeds
And I love my boy and that’s why I’m leaving
I don’t want him to be aware that there’s
Any such thing as grieving.
I’ve had one particular phrase rattling round in my skull since first hearing this song as a goth-ish teenager:
“These are dangerous days
To say what you feel is to dig your own grave.”
Ain’t it the truth! The stories I could tell you. I’ve lost friends. Enemies. Pets. Jobs. Neighbors.
Other lines resonate with both the heroes journey and the martyr’s fall. They carry biblical weight:
“If you were of the world, they would love you.”
and in another instance
“If they hated me they will hate you.”
My analysis? We’re all told what to say and what to think. To cross these often invisible lines is risky. As Voltaire said,”To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you cannot criticize.”
At least, I always thought it was Voltaire who coined that phrase. Just now, though, I googled it and found out there’s a controversy.
The internet is fighting over this attribution. According to numerous fact-check articles and think pieces, it’s not French historian and philosopher Voltaire who said it. It was thought up by “a white supremacist.”
Way to completely destroy an insightful quote! That phrase you like wasn’t uttered by a cool and mysterious French polymath at all. It instead spat out by a Nazi! The joke’s on me, the truth is stranger than fiction, and all that.
Still, that saying holds true. Speaking certain words is risky. So I’m gonna hold onto it, whether it be written by class or trash.
And then there’s that warning: If they hated me, they will hate you.
As Sinéad O’Connor points out, there’s no safety in silence when censorship and tyranny hold sway.
And now, literary gadfly that I am, I’m leaping to some other words, written by Pastor Martin Niemoller:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
Dang. I feel that in my gut. But Sinéad said it in less words, maybe even better: If they hated me, they will hate you.
She should know. When it came to her reputation, her livelihood, so much was lost when she ripped up that picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live.
I’m gonna say it, using this once, quite cynically, my one get-out-of-jail card. I was raised Catholic and I was still unfazed by this act. I was more startled by the extreme moralistic backlash. This woman of talent, of vulnerability and yes, maybe of a little craziness, was mocked like nobody’s business.
I always think about it this way. We want writers and entertainers to go to the edge an invisible universe and come back with works of art or at least diversion. But when they get too weird, it’s too much for the public.
There are always, though, those silent cheerleaders, and that’s what I am for Sinead O’Connor. Back to “Black Boys on Mopeds.”
It is, of course, Sinead O’Connor’s “Get Up, Stand Up” moment, like Bob Marley but with tears in his eyes. These are dangerous days. To say what you feel is to dig your own grave.
They’re brave, unforgettable and elegaic words, .
Listen to me! I’m expounding. I’m fangirling. And I haven’t even talked about the guitar.
–Sarah Torribio
Listen to more songs of the day curated by Sarah Torribio HERE
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