4. Sinead O’ConnorThe Lion And The Cobra

This was just such a revelation. I was the same age, as I will always be the same age as Sinead was, and when that album came out, I was really moving from understanding folk music to dance music and electronic music. With this, musically, before I can talk about lyrically and politically, it was so interesting that she would have these very vulnerable songs, but then also big dance beats, and it was a revelation for me to be able to not see things as so purist. And then to have a hit, ‘Mandinka’, which was about female genital mutilation, but was up for song of the year at the Grammys, is very powerful. Or ‘Jerusalem’, which is about the breakdown of a relationship, but relating it to the breakdown of Palestinian and Israeli issues. Just so powerful, so ahead of the game in understanding politics and understanding religion and respect for humans, not just going by what a priest says or patriarchal methods. And the presentation of shaving her head and wearing these oversized clothes, which is now such a standard fashion, but she wasn’t really thinking about fashion. She was just thinking about how to express herself in a way that, because she was who she was, and young and beautiful, but just trying to say her politics and also just being so misunderstood… I could go on and on and on. 

She was just incredible, an incredible voice. And also, how vulnerable you can be in these lyrics. If I think about the song ‘Troy’ and how it just ramps up, I loved the way she would just ramp up songs. They would just go on this diagonal plane of intensity, more and more and more, rather than being verse chorus verse chorus.