SONG TITLE: JACKIE

PERFORMER: SINEAD O'CONNOR

SONGWRITER: SINEAD O'CONNOR

YEAR OF RELEASE: 1987

COMMENTS: Right out of the box with the first song on the first album, she comes out effortlessly straddling impossible contradictions. She's a very young woman, still a teenager. She's ultra modern and high tech, singing over a throbbing synthesizer. She's some kind of new wave chick with an avant garde look.

All that, yet she's singing quite convincingly in the voice of an old ghost. She sounds like some widow from the Odyssey who has lost her husband at sea. She refuses to believe he isn't coming back, though, so she spends the rest of her life walking the shore, waiting for his return. She's dead many long decades now herself, but still haunting the beach, howling at the elements that took her mate.

Lord, where'd this girl come up with this stuff? How could a teenager understand this stuff? Oh, but this was just the start of many surprises.