The Lion and the Cobra by Sinéad O'Connor

The Lion and the Cobra, Sinéad O'Connor's debut album, came out on Ensign and Chrysalis in 1987, and it's a startling first shot from a singer who produced it herself and recorded it late in her first pregnancy. She took the title from Psalm 91:13, and Enya recites that psalm in Irish at the start of "Never Get Old", which tells you straight away this isn't going to be an ordinary pop record.

What it is instead is a record of wild dynamics: that voice going from a whisper to a banshee howl in the space of a bar, over music that lurches between spare, spooky atmospheres and full-tilt rock. "Mandinka" is a wiry, charging blast of energy, "Troy" is a sweeping, stormy epic that seems to grow bigger every time it comes round, "I Want Your Hands on Me" slinks and throbs, "Jerusalem" smolders, and "Jackie" is stark and haunted. It's the sound of somebody refusing to be anything other than exactly who she is.

Looking back in 2005, O'Connor said she was proud of the songs but didn't like to sing them anymore: she'd written them as a kind of therapy and didn't want to go back there emotionally. The cover photo was by Kate Garner, formerly of Haysi Fantayzee, and the US and Canadian editions swapped it for a quieter pose meant to soften her image for North American audiences.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.