Haunted - Sinead O’Connor & Shane MacGowan
Sinead O’Connor has the one of the most beautiful singing voices I’ve ever heard, certainly the greatest I’ve heard in person. I remember seeing her on the last night of my freshman year of college, standing-room at The Beacon. “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” had been out a month or two and the coming meltdown was still months off. Up until then the concept of a voice with such clarity and power existed only in cartoons where the diva would hit notes that would smash lightbulbs and crumble buildings. It was like that, but with this incredible innocence.
Shane MacGowan of The Pogues also has a distinctive voice. By distinctive I mean ragged. Ugly. Out of tune. I don’t mean that it’s bad. Ugly art can still be good and Shane’s voice is certainly soulful. Plus, it’s not his really his fault, he’s only got a few teeth and his blood is almost certainly 100 proof.
So that brings me to this song, which you can find on Shane’s estranged from the Pogues album The Snake. It’s a perfect mix of the beautiful and the ugly, the sacred and the profane, the innocent and the drunk.
