Today, I don't know it is a sad song, but it sounds sad. I mean, it's Sinéad O'Connor. And to top it off, it's Sinéad O'Connor covering a Dame Elton John song. Yes, I feminized him. Yes, it's homophobic, but I can live with it.
As John goes, I can take or leave his song "Sacrifice". I had heard it, obviously (or maybe not?), but I had stopped buying his records around the time of the Brown Dirt Cowboy.
O'Connor does an incredible (my opinion) of the song on a tribute album to John and Bernie Taupin called Two Rooms. Years before, O'Connor would take offense when people compared her first disk to Kate Bush, saying she had more in common with Elton John. I guess she went out of her way to prove that.
She slightly slows down an already semi-slowish song and her very understated vocals make you lean in to hear them and take them in. I've listened to this version 100x (and I'm being conservative) than I've ever listented to the original.
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It's a song that has immense significance for me, as I intended it should. I played it on continuous repeat as I packed up my belongings to leave the apartment I had in Germany (Cologne) in 1991 in order to return to England, due to my failure to find work there - the Berlin Wall had just recently fallen - and my savings and resources near-exhausted. Now whenever I hear it, by accident or design, that poignant period is forever tearfully conjured up.
It's the first time I've heard anyone other than EJ himself voicing it - but has there ever been anyone else at all? As for this version, one really needs to have already known the words, or Ms O'Connor (or Shuhada Sudaqat, as she is also known by her Islamic name since converting 5 years ago) may just as well have been singing in Mandarin for all I could make out.
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