by Sommer Wagen
In 1994, Sinéad O’Connor wanted to talk about Ireland. Specifically, she wanted to talk about the “famine” – about the fact that there “never really was one.”
“Famine,” the penultimate track of O’Connor’s fourth studio album “Universal Mother,” reframes the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1852 as an inevitable consequence of British colonialism instead of a random natural disaster. With an infectious hip hop beat and her lilting cadence, O’Connor described the lasting intergenerational trauma spawned by the alleged famine and asserted that healing comes from acknowledging what really happened.
It is a song designed to get stuck in your head– and it succeeds. O’Connor drove her message home down to the detail, including wolf howls in reference to the extermination of wolves from Ireland by British colonialism.
She also sampled The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” in the refrain, inquiring: “All of the lonely people, where do they all come from?” Removed from its original narrative, the line prompts listeners to think more deeply about the systemic failures she was describing.
The song spawned controversy at its release, which came towards the end of the 30-year ethno-religious conflict between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland known as The Troubles, which itself was a result of British colonialism.
“Many said [the song] irresponsibly dredged up an anti-English attitude that had dissipated,” said Kelly Candaele for the Los Angeles Times in 1995.
The themes of “Famine” resonate with today’s U.S. political climate. In “Famine,” O’Connor says schools erased what really happened by going “On and on about ‘the terrible famine.’” In one line, she described how the trauma of colonialism is carried out by the education system. This year, Florida enacted new education standards that teach that Black people benefited from slavery.
O’Connor, who died this year, always eschewed popularity and maintained an outspoken reputation by always doing what she felt was right.
“I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career,” she wrote in her 2021 memoir “Rememberings,” “and my [tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live] put me back on the right track.”