R.J. Keller
I first heard Troy by Sinead O’Connor in the spring of 1988 when a friend of mine loaned me her copy of The Lion and The Cobra. I was seventeen years old and the song scared the shit out of me. But I was hooked.
It opens with vocals that are barely a whisper and with low, haunting strings. By the end of the song both she and the strings are howling her betrayal. At the midway point she wails, “I’d kill a dragon for you”…and she means it.
At seventeen I didn’t fully appreciate the song. I didn’t know that the title and fiery imagery had been borrowed from a poem by William Keats. I would later find it ironic that Keats absolved the object of his unrequited affection with the words, “Was there another Troy for her to burn?” while O’Connor used the sentiment as a scathing accusation. And in the mid-’90s I would shake my head when I heard people proclaim Alanis Morisette’s You Oughta Know the anthem for spurned women everywhere, because I knew the true honor belonged to the song I had heard so many years before.
At seventeen I only knew that I never wanted to experience the kind of heartache that had inspired this song. Eventually I did, of course, because we all do. And when it happened, I was grateful to Sinead O’Connor for giving me such a powerful outlet for the pain.
R.J. Keller’s fine first novel, Waiting For Spring, was recently released by AmazonEncore. To learn more about R.J. and her work, visit her website, follow her on Twitter, or like her on Facebook. Honestly, you should do all three.
It’s a good album. My favorite songs were “Mandinka” and “Put Your Hands On Me.”