Troy by Sinéad O'Connor

Album: The Lion and the Cobra (1987)

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Songfacts®:

"Troy" is an angry review of Sinead O'Connor's hometown of Dublin and her mother who died in a car crash in 1985 when Sinead was 17. She claimed to have been physically, sexually and mentally abused by her mother, but her claims have been disputed by other members of her family.
The song uses the story of the historical city Troy as a metaphor for the betrayal of Sinead O'Connor's mother. Troy famously fell to the Greeks by the stratagem of leaving behind, in a feigned retreat, a wooden horse containing armed infiltrators to open the gates. This strategy became known as a "Trojan Horse."
"Troy" was the first single from O'Connor's debut album, The Lion And The Cobra. She was pregnant with her first child - a son named Jake - during recording and gave birth just a few weeks before it was released. She was 20 years old.

The album got some positive attention in the press and earned O'Connor a gig opening for INXS. She had started shaving her head even before the album was issued, which seemed like a bad idea at the time but ended up being a mark of distinction that suited her distinctive voice and abstract lyrics quite well. This level of notoriety was about right for her, but with her next album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got in 1990, it went topsy turvy. "Nothing Compares 2 U" was a monster hit brought her a degree of scrutiny she couldn't handle. O'Connor became more of a protest singer and got even more outspoken. At times, she suffered breakdowns as it all took a toll on her mental health.
Sinéad O'Connor's first music video was for "Troy." It was directed by John Maybury, who would later helm her classic video for "Nothing Compares 2 U."

For Troy, they made an incursion to the Hellfire Club in Dublin. It's not just a Stranger Things reference: The Hellfire Club is an old stone building with lots of ghost stories. It was supposedly the site of some black magic rituals, and the Devil was known to appear.

O'Connor was shaved completely bald for the shoot and covered from the chest up with gold paint. The explosions outside the building were real: the crew used napalm to do it.
According to O'Connor, there are only two chords on this song because those were the only chords she knew how to play on guitar.
A club mix of this song become a US dance hit in 2002, reaching #3 in the American Dance chart and #48 in the UK chart.
Sinead O'Connor is backed by an orchestra on this song, a departure from other tracks on The Lion And The Cobra album.

The first attempts at making the album were with producer Mick Glossop, who had Sinead in her band record mostly live in the studio with the exception of "Troy." Glossop didn't pan out, so Kevin Mooney took over and most of the songs were re-recorded.

Comments: 6

Chris B from UkThank you to Tensacross from Earth and others for their comments and information.
I am so saddened about Sinead's passing. I have listened to her music for decades. I have just started listening to her biography. I'm not a person who seeks to meet famous people, but I wish I had met Sinead.
August 2024.
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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