release date: Sep. 22, 1992
format: cd
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,12]
producer: Phil Ramone, Sinéad O'Connor
label: Ensign / Chrysalis - nationality: Ireland
Track highlights: 1. "Why Don't You Do Right?" - 2. "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" - 4. "Black Coffee" - 5. "Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home" - 9. "Love Letters"
3rd studio album by Sinéad O'Connor following 2½ years after I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (Mar. 1990) is yet another species of sorts. The debut was strong and promising sparkle filled filled to the brim with resistance and much anger. The sophomore '90 album was a majestic revelation that hit mainstream pop / rock like an earthquake. These two albums showcase O'Connor's inner thoughts, her personal stories, and both invite us all the way in without much protection. Her apparent open-heartedness combined with a will to make a difference and to use her public exposure to fight for human rights against inequality and exploitation wherever it perseveres also made her a target of personal criticism. Her confronting attitude was ridiculed and her role as a young mother was openly debated. In that regard, Am I Not Your Girl? is a sidestep, or an attempt to show another side of her artistry. Apparently, her own ambition was to show fans the type of music she had found inspiration in and what she had grown up listening to, which is why the music here differs greatly to her first two albums. Aside from that, it's also an album reserved to covers, and primarily of vocal jazz and American pop standards, and it's also quite apparent with the originals in mind that the album has been arranged and promoted. In that regard, O'Connor's version don't differ much from the popular versions of these classic songs.
I wasn't exactly a fan of any of these recordings, and I still find it - if not really redundant, at least more of a curiosity. There's much sincerity and heartfelt ambition in here, somewhere, although, I think it mostly drowns in pomposity. Had she only been persuaded to make her own adaptations, it may have served her better. Perhaps her private life was in too much need of some sort of foundation that this is what she could engage in - she had had a miscarriage and was later separted from her son's father after only one year's of marriage [this wouldn't be her only time with this kind of experience, though], and she alledgedly lived an on/off affair with Peter Gabriel. So, instead she comes out showcasing herself as a persona - a Sinatress, and all for the show of it, and to what end? Her Cole Porter contribution with "You Do Something to Me" was ever so much better. Bu it probably paved way for the idea of this album, which in comparison lacks foundation and soul. Actually, she made a contribution on two songs for the aforementioned Gabriel's Us, released the same month, which both overshines her own album by a clear margin. Her emotional engagement with Gabriel later led her to write the end-song on her '94 album Universal Mother.
Prior to this, she had come out on a bad stand with the American public when touring with her 1990 album. She had rejected to perform live as the arrangers insisted on played the national anthem before her live concert. This led to some turmoil which had radio stations banning O'Connor as a response to her banning the American anthem. In this regard, O'Connor stood by her own convictions, regardless what cultural implications she was up against. Now, with this new album, I guess she saw that as an opportunity to turn things to the better, but effectively they went from bad to much worse shortly after O'Connor had embarked on her American promotion tour with the album in Oct. '92. Her own story short being brought up with a mentally sick mother, at a strict Roman-Catholic nuns' center in Dublin, which had included punishment and exploitation, she ultimately found herself in a conflicting stand concerning religion and Catholicism in particular, and when it - once again - became publically known that priests of the Catholic Church had been sexually abusing children, she took advantage of her live TV-performance on Saturday Night Live to send a message by tearing up a picture of the current Pope while proclaiming: "Fight the real enemy!". The scene was sat, so to speak. America united against O'Connor it seemed. In the US, she was ridiculed by TV-hosts and celebrities, she was rejected nation-wide, and the story expanded on a world-wide scale. In england and in Ireland newspapers were dealing with gossip about her role as a mother, a wife, and her mental issues. Completely out of proportions with apparently noone interested in the background of her message, nor any of her intentions regarding her stand. Instead of promoting her music, O'Connor ended up adding to the image of her as troublesome and mentally unstable.
Nevertheless, Am I Not Your Girl? is not one of her great albums. At best, it serves as background muzak, and as a sidestepping parenthesis.
Not recommended.
[ 👎allmusic.com, Rolling Stone 2 / 5, 🤯NME 4,5 / 5 stars ]
