“Troy” by Sinéad O'Connor

"Troy" was Sinéad O'Connor's first single, taken from her 1987 debut album The Lion and the Cobra, and it's a startling way to introduce yourself: a slow, simmering, orchestral-sized torch song that erupts into fury. She wrote it, produced it with Kevin Moloney and arranged it with Mike Clowes, whose synthesizer and keyboards hang over the track like storm clouds, while Rob Dean's guitars, Spike Hollifield's bass and John Reynolds' drums hold back until the dam breaks.

The title nods to "No Second Troy", the William Butler Yeats poem, and O'Connor's voice goes from a hushed whisper to a full-throated howl that sounds like it could bring down walls.

It went nowhere in Ireland or the UK at first, but the Dutch got it, sending it to No. 5 on the Dutch Top 40 in 1988. In 2002 it came back in a dance version, "Troy (The Phoenix from the Flame)", that hit the top ten on several dance charts, the US Dance Club Songs chart among them.

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