I Want Your (Hands On Me)

Album: The Lion and the Cobra (1987)
Charted: 77
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Songfacts®:

  • Sinéad O'Connor wrote some intensely personal songs for her debut album, The Lion And The Cobra, but this wasn't one of them. She told Record Mirror the song is "simply about shagging."
  • This lusty song wouldn't raise an eyebrow in modern times, but coming from an Irish woman in the '80s, it was a bit scandalous. O'Connor didn't adhere to the conservative values of her strict Catholic upbringing. She was pregnant when she made the album and did marry the father (her drummer, John Reynolds), but she went on to have three more children all with different fathers, none of whom she married. Oh, and she also shaved her head.
  • O'Connor wrote this song with members of her backing band:

    Mike Clowes - keyboards
    Rob Dean - guitar
    John Reynolds - drums
    Richard Holifield - bass
  • O'Connor co-produced the album with her engineer, Kevin Moloney. The first efforts were with a traditional producer who didn't gel with her at all. Sinead had a clear idea of how she wanted the album to sound, so she had the guy sacked, which invigorated the sessions.
  • A version with a rap interlude by MC Lyte was released as a single in 1988 and reached #77 in the UK. This version got a music video, directed by John Maybury, showing O'Connor and Lyte performing the song in front of a moving background of flowers.
  • In 1988, this song was used in the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and in the Miami Vice episode "Borrasca."
  • This was a very different song with a different title when it started. Rob Dean, who played guitar on the track and co-wrote it, told Songfacts the story:

    "This song was created entirely by the band in rehearsals from a series of funky jam sessions. Throughout the initial recording of the album with Mick Glossop, it went by the title 'Sex Jam,' and during those sessions a 9-minute version with full horn section (still unreleased) was created. The released version from the second round of recordings with Kevin Moloney, is a far more economical and simplified track - instrument and arrangement-wise - as was typical of those sessions."

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