Track Listing

1. Speech Extract
2. Fire On Babylon
3. John I Love You
4. My Darling Child
5. Am I A Human
6. Red Football
7. All Apologies
8. Perfect Indian
9. Scorn Not His Simplicity
10. All Babies
11. In This Heart
12. Tiny Grief Song
13. Famine
14. Thank You For Hearing Me

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41745 in Music
• Released on: 1994-09-15
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Released two years after she tore up a picture of the Pope on prime-time US television, this is O'Connor's fourth and most fully-realised album. Intensely spiritual, it burns with anger, passion and a fragile beauty. Opening with a call to arms by feminist writer Germaine Greer, the album then moves into the sultry groove of "Fire On Babylon", O'Connor's chilling song about her experience of child abuse. In the tradition of rap music as education, she mixes Celtic folk with hip-hop beats on the track "Famine", a tough-talking tribute to Irish history complete with samples from Miles Davis and Fiddler On The Roof; while pared-down ballads such as "John I Love You" and "Thank You For Hearing Me" are soaring yet simple hymns to the rejuvenating power of love. She even does an intimate version of Nirvana's song "All Apologies". More poised and reflective than previous albums, Universal Mother shows vision and musical maturity. As O'Connor suggests in the sleeve notes, it is heard best "on headphones (and) ... in sequence, rather than as single tracks." --Lucy O'Brien

CD Description
Sinead O'Connor has transcended much of the pain and anger of her public persona with this moody, evocative set of songs. Touching upon themes of fraternity and maternity with folkish grace and childlike metaphors, O'Connor's UNIVERSAL MOTHER reveals aspects of her longings and fears in cryptic freeze frames of song and sorcery that are haunting in their simplicity, and unsettling in their focus on doomed innocents.
Consecrated to the world's mothers and children, and dedicated "as a prayer from Ireland", UNIVERSAL MOTHER opens with an invocation from Germaine Greer, and the ominous overture "Fire In Babylon". With its menacing bassline and swirling mix of jazz samples and keyboards, it echoes Peter Gabriel, P.I.L. and Robert Fripp with its portents of dissolution and doom ("Life's backwards/People turn it around/The house is burned...The children are gone".). The penultimate "Famine" acts as a psychic bookend. Following a wolf's cry and an echo of "Fiddler On The Roof", the arrangement lurches forward with a hip hop collage of Miles Davis and the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", as O'Connor's narrative essays the destructionof Irish culture and history.
In between, O'Connor's intimate confessionals are framed in folkish piano accompaniments, with spare brushstrokes of strings. From the tender "My Darling Child", to a poignant cover of Kurt Cobain's "All Apologies", O'Connor's dark chamber music focuses on the joys and heartaches of childhood, scary tales of abuse, alientation from her family, and other painful rites of passage. UNIVERSAL MOTHER is an enigmatic, deeply personal portrait of the artist in flux--a triumph of compassion over rage.

Customer Reviews

Great forgotten album of the Nineties
This is a truly excellent piece of work, one of the great but shamefully ignored albums of the Nineties. The myth prevails today that Sinead O'Connor was a one hit, cover-version wonder, but this largely self-penned collection shows how wrong that perception is. OK, so Famine is a little embarrassing, and the Am I Human interlude from her son upsets the flow, but most of the rest is magnificent - emotionally enriching, simply melodic tracks, beautifully sung. The acapella In This Heart, in particular, was the best thing ever done on Jools Holland's show and it's equally stunning here.

Buy this album now - it's a rare gem.

Much-underrated '94 album
Universal Mother is Sinead O'Connor's Berlin,Heartbreaker,The Holy Bible,Third/Sister Lovers,Pink Moon,Time Out Of Mind & In Utero all at once-it is both harrowing and brilliant.Indeed,she covers In Utero's All Apologies in her own idiosyncratic way here.This album is one of the nineties' lost albums,but it's time will come.This is like a less musically brutal version of PJ Harvey's Rid Of Me,with the same mixture of bruised introspection and pure anger.

Universal Mother
"Universal Mother" is a brilliant album for Sinéad fans.This was the first Sinéad album I bought and it impressed me a lot.
It starts off with the raw angry song "Fire on Babylon" and includes a Phil Coultier cover of "Scorn not his Simplicity" and a cover of a song written by Kurt Cobain called "All Apoligies" which is outstanding. Sinéad's songwriting skills are shown with the beautifull song "Thankyou for Hearing Me" and "Perfect Indian".Also the song "My Darling Child" written about her son is very good.
"Red footbal" and "Famine" promotes Sinéads more agressive side
but her son Jake makes a starring role in the song "Am I a Human?".Overall i think its a beautifull,emotional album but the whole album wouldnt appeal to everybody but selected tracks are very commercial.