3 essential Sinéad O'Connor songs you need to hear

"The Last Day of Our Acquaintance" (1990)

O'Connor wrote honestly. She wasn't one to come up with characters she drew from people she watched; She was inspired by what she lived. This is another song from I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, and it is this album that made O'Connor into a global star that maybe she didn't want and certainly didn't seem ready for. But tracks such as "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance" are so personal and insular, that maybe she didn't the world's acceptance and just wanted to be heard.

The song was written at a time when O'Connor's first marriage - she was married four times and had four children, one of whom passed away in 2021 from suicide - was falling apart. In fact, best stay away from this track if you are going through a divorce and emotionally it would be difficult to listen to.

The chorus is simple and direct, "But this is the last day of our acquaintance/I will meet you later in somebody's office/I'll talk, but you won't listen to me/I know your answer already." I'm sure we have all felt this about a relationship of some kind, so the song endures because of its honesty.

Musically, it begins like "Black Boys on Mopeds" but near the end there is a sonic release of all the frustration of the dying relationship. Somehow that lets you know that O'Connor is ready to move on from the relationship as well so while the melancholy lingers, hope and freedom are just on the horizon.