Album: The Lion and the Cobra (1987)
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  • I'll remember it
    In Dublin in a rainstorm
    And sitting in the long grass in summer
    Keeping warm
    I'll remember it
    Every restless night
    We were so young then
    We thought that everything we could possibly do was right
    Then we moved stolen from our very eyes
    And I wondered where you went to
    Tell me, when did the light die?

    You will rise
    You'll return
    The Phoenix from the flame
    You will learn
    You will rise
    You'll return
    Being what you are
    There is no other Troy
    For you to burn

    And I never meant to hurt you
    I swear I didn't mean those things I said
    I never meant to do that to you
    Next time I'll keep my hands to myself instead
    Oh, does she love you?
    What do you want to do?
    Does she need you like I do?
    Do you love her?
    Is she good for you?
    Does she hold you like I do?

    Do you want me?
    Should I leave?
    I know you're always telling me that you love me
    But just sometimes I wonder if I should believe
    Oh, I love you
    God, I love you
    I'd kill a dragon for you, I'll die

    But I will rise
    And I will return
    The Phoenix from the flame
    I have learned
    I will rise
    And you'll see me return
    Being what I am
    There is no other Troy
    For me to burn

    And you should've left the light on
    You should've left the light on
    Then I wouldn't have tried and you'd never have known
    And I wouldn't have pulled you tighter
    No, I wouldn't have pulled you close
    I wouldn't have screamed, "No, I can't let you go"
    If the door wasn't closed
    No, I wouldn't have pulled you to me
    No, I wouldn't have kissed your face
    You wouldn't have begged me to hold you
    If we hadn't been there in the first place
    Oh, but I know you wanted me to be there, oh, oh, oh
    Every look that you threw told me so
    But you should've left the light on
    You should've left the light on

    When the flames burn away
    But you're still spitting fire
    Make no difference what you say
    You're still a liar
    You're still a liar
    You're still a liar Writer/s: Sinead O'Connor
    Publisher: Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
    Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 5

  • Tensacross from EarthAnyone who says sinead was "troubled" with a failed career who "could have been" or "should have been" or wasn't listened to or didn't know this or had "mental health issues" (which is just the nice way of dismissing someone as crazy) doesn't get it.

    https://youtu.be/JeIHZvZTJTg

    By Sinead's own terms, she succeeded. She never wanted to be a pop star and she detested capitalism in Biblical terms, as Babylon. She did not want success in Babylon and it took her by surprise. She was both amused and disgusted by it. She intentionally used the fame and success she did not want ("I do not want what I haven't got") maximally as an incendiary weapon against her real enemy - the Catholic Church.

    And tho her project is not finished, Sinead O'Connor succeeded. Sinead O'Connor was a success. She did, in fact, destroy the Catholic Church in Ireland.

    Collapse: Inside Ireland’s stunning rebuke of Catholicism
    bit.ly/3DIUZoL

    Irish Catholic Church's Stunning Decline
    bit.ly/3E3xvet

    Ireland is No Longer a Catholic Nation
    bit.ly/43WTEVZ

    ARE THOSE NOT RESULTS? she manifested the unthinkable!

    Not even one of these fawning celebrities in the press "gets it". If they did, they wouldn't be describing Sinead as a "troubled soul". they'd be explicity demanding the continuation of her project: FULL destruction of the church!

    But they obscure her message by speaking in abstractions, as if the point of sinead o'connor was personal mental health instead of an outward project to destroy the church, eliminate the authority of the Pope, dismantle the Vatican, return all it's stolen wealth to it's former colonies especially in Africa, eliminate capitalism and condemn material success and fame as false idolatry. FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY. ffs the real enemy is not mental health. Thats just a symptom.

    When Sinead was a girl the Catholic Church had a totalitarian grip on her country and its people. Most thought they'd go to thier graves under it's power and abuse, living in shame, a shame they had been convinced they deserved and a violence they perpetuated amongst each other, within families.
    Sinead's mother used to beat her with garden tools and force her to say she was nothing.
    "Whenever she beats me, which is daily, I’m naked. She makes me take my clothes off. I have to lie on the floor. I have to open my arms and legs. I have to let her attack my abdomen. She wants to burst my womb. She wants to destroy my reproductive system. She wants to stop me from being a female.”

    The beatings only stopped in sinead's late teens, when she became the same size as her mother. She tried to confront her mother about the abuse but her mother denied it ever even happened. Her mother played the victim. This is very familiar to me. It is so confusing.

    if only people listened to Sinead's words instead of words written about Sinead.

    Most people think TROY is about a heterosexual relationship. It is not. It is about Sinead's relationship with her mother, the abuse, and how Rage can exist aside Forgiveness. It is a masterpiece. She flips constantly in the lyrics between speaking to herself and to her mother and in her mother's words to her to try to get a grip on the reality of what happened from all sides and why.

    She's sitting in the tall summer grass in a rainstorm in Dublin not to be romantic. It's because her mother used to force her to live outside the house even in rainstorms!

    Sinead wrote this song after her mother unexpectedly died in a car crash. She can hardly believe she's gone. how can such a totalitarian, violent, "loving", omnipotent force just vanish??

    I believe her mother's inconceivable death in Sinead's teen years is what gave sinead the moral imagination - the confidence - to know that the Church, too, could also be made to vanish. To be destroyed.

    Her mother burns the first Troy, and it's Sinead. By the second verse, Sinead recognizes that her mother is going to return.. that she is going to become her mother. She is going inherit the same capability for destruction and violence whether she likes it or not. The cycle of violence and abuse is real.

    But Sinead's going to fight the real enemy. She's going to kill a dragon for her mother, and that dragon is the Church. Like an avenging Christ, she will rise. She will return. And there is no other Troy but the Church for her to burn.

    TROY by Sinead OConnor
    https://youtu.be/JeIHZvZTJTg
  • Aaron Spet from Canada.whoa i dont think there was sexual abuse. mostly the others. do you just assume that
  • Kashmeera from Berlin"She has claimed to have been physically, sexually and mentally abused by her mother, but her claims have been disputed by other members of her family."

    This is painful to read. Do you not know, that it is very common, that victims are called liars, when they speak up about abuse? It is very human. It is just much easier to handle, that a child lied than to realize that a person in your family (who you may adore) is a sex offender.

    I think it would have been enough, if you just wrote "She has claimed to have been physically, sexually and mentally abused by her mother."
  • Mike Degroff from Lilburn, GaJohn from LA.,
    Do your homework on this song. Interpretation is different than investigation, and you are certainly doing the former. O'Conner has been more than clear about the song's meaning in interviews. It involves O'Conner's mother visiting her in a children's care home and her mother making excuses for abusive behavior.
  • John from Los Angeles, CaThe lyrics of this song don't match up with the abuse theory above at all. It's a song about losing someone to someone else and the anger that arises from that.

    Geesh.

    Maybe they thought they were commenting on Hell is for Children by Pat Benatar.
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