Revisiting Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘The Lion and The Cobra’ — One of the Greatest Albums Ever Made

by Marisa Torrieri Bloom

I fell in love with Sinéad O’Connor’s music almost by accident, six years after her big chart topper “Nothing Compares 2 U” made her a household name.

It was 1996 in New Orleans, where I’d traveled to from Washington, D.C., to visit my friend Bethany, who was a freshman at University of New Orleans. After our first wild night out, I remember waking up to the swell of a rock-guitar riff, followed by the most evocative, breathy feminine voice, wafting from her roommate Ilana’s boombox. And then the vocals took on a sudden, unexpected passion: 

I don’t know no shame, I feel no pain, I can’t … see the flame!

My ears perked up. 

“Who is this?” I asked, intrigued.

“Sinèad O’Connor,” she retorted, in somewhat of a “duh” moment as she hurriedly dressed for class.

The song was “Mandinka,” the second track off O’Connor’s stunning 1987 debut album, The Lion and The Cobra. 

I bought a copy at my local record store in College Park, Maryland, soon after I returned home. Within days, I’d learned every lyric, vocal inflection, and chorus, between the eerie opener “Jackie” and the closer “Just Call Me Joe.” I had just started playing guitar one year earlier, and learned how arpeggiate chords just so I could cover “Just Like You Said It Would Be.” 

It’s only now, in the days after her death, that I’ve realized how impactful that record was to my life. It’s an album that I know by heart, perhaps because it is so close to my heart. It was a constant companion on road trips in the late ’90s, a fitting soundtrack to my own hormone-riddled struggle to find myself while wrestling with desires and demons.

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And only now, as music critics release their top-10 lists of favorite O’Connor songs, am I learning that my favorite tracks were merely B-sides.

Over this weekend, I streamed the album again for the first time in at least a decade, while driving six hours between Connecticut and Dewey Beach, Delaware. It’s shocking that she recorded such a perfect, complex body of work at such a young age: 20. There isn’t a bad song on the album. Her voice is nuanced and theatrical, whether she’s singing, wailing, or lashing out. She is breathy and romantic — and moody and theatrical.

Pitchfork, in its review of the album many years after its release, was spot-on in its description of O’Connor’s voice: “It has the elucidating quality of light through stained glass but can just as easily become a tempest, shattering windows and leaving the interiors raw and wrecked.”

That she was on the threshold of motherhood when she released this body of work isn’t lost on me.

In many ways, O’Connor is a bit of an unsung hero of Generation X. More dudes — especially millennials — associate her biggest hit (written by Prince) with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, who covered (brilliantly) it in 2015. O’Connor stood strong against industry pressure to grow her hair out and conform to social norms. And in spite of her outsize talent, she didn’t achieve the half the level of international fame that many international stars of lesser talent enjoy. I wish we had more compassion for mental illness and that her gift, as Karen O pointed out, “wasn’t at such great cost.” 

As I listened to the weighty single “Troy” — a six-minute rock opera with dramatic rises and falls — I can’t believe how unaware I was, in my youth, of her brilliance, as she shifted from wistful to empowered in one measure, “I will rise/I will return … the Phoenix from the flame!” 

If there is a silver lining to her passing at age 56, it’s that more budding musicians will become curious, and perhaps stumble upon her as I did decades ago. While The Lion and the Cobra is one of the best-kept secrets of the late ‘80s, I hope that the record is heard by young vocalists who want to know what being one of the “Greatest of All Time” truly sounds like.

Marisa Torrieri Bloom is the editor and founder of Rockmommy.