I don’t make music which has lyrics. Perhaps I shall one day in the future, when I’ve worked up the courage to put my singing voice out there. It’s tricky, because my mom was a fabulous singer, and I never felt like I could live up to her standards in this area.

But I digress. While I am a instrumentalist at heart, I do appreciate a quality song and a resonant voice. And in the never ending saga of “Jared discovers a thing everyone else has known for decades 😂”, I recently had a moment as I was introduced to the fantastical talents of Sinéad O’Connor.

(You can blame the Apple TV+ show Bad Sisters for that!)

Thus far, I haven’t even made my way through O’Connor’s most popular and recognizable material. I somehow landed on her 2000 album Faith and Courage and stayed there for a while, marveling at a quality I find very hard to uncover with a lot of the pop songs I hear these days: raw, unbridled authenticity.

You might even say there’s an edge of activism in some of the lyrics, which I know can rub some folks the wrong way (you’re an entertainer! keep your politics to yourself! stay in your lane!) but that has never been my philosophy. While I wouldn’t advocate for “message art” per se (a term I remember hearing a lot in my upbringing as a Very Bad Thing), I think great art does and should have a message (even if very subtle). If art is communication…well then, what are you communicating?

Just marvel at this passage from The Healing Room:

I have a universe inside me
Where I can go, an spirit guides me
There I can ask, oh, any question
I get the answers if I listen

I have a healing room inside me
The loving healers, there they feed me
They make me happy with their laughter
They kiss and tell me I’m their daughter
I’m their daughter

Poetry.

Or how about this selection from Daddy I’m Fine:

Sorry to be disappointing
Wasn’t born for no marrying
Wanna make my own living singing
Strong independent pagan woman singing

And I feel real cool and I feel real good
Got my hair shaved off and my black thigh boots
I stand up tall with my pride upright
I feel real hot when the makeup’s nice
I get sexy underneath them lights
Like I wanna fuck every man in sight
Baby come home with me tonight
Make you feel good make you feel all right

Now that’s Rock ‘n’ Roll!

Listen, I don’t mean to sound like I’m droning on about “back in my day” because there’s always great music being made everywhere and I truly adore plenty of new music (I regularly defy the common refrain that as you get older you only want to listen to the music of your youth). But I do feel like it can take some work to find songs which are so intensely direct and personal and feel like they’ve been birthed right out of a real person’s real lived experience. You know when you read those lyrics and hear Sinéad O’Connor sing them that the I of I’m their daughter, or the I of I told my poor worried father, well that I is unequivocally her.

And it’s glorious.