The Alternative Number Ones: Sinéad O’Connor’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

"Whatever it may bring, I will live by my own policies. I will sleep with a clear conscience. I will sleep in peace." For most of its running time, the Sinéad O'Connor song "The Emperor's New Clothes" is one side of an intense domestic conversation. Two people had a baby when they were young, and one of those people has reached disorienting levels of success. This has left the couple at a crossroads. They're freaked out and confused, helpless to resist the forces pulling them apart.

We only hear one side of the conversation. It's jangled and conflicted and sad, and it doesn't exactly articulate a clear viewpoint. If we had access to the other side of this conversation, we might hear something just as refracted and messed-up. But then Sinéad O'Connor stops singing about the particulars of her romantic situation. She lifts her head, looks the rest of the world in the eye, and hits us with a bracing blast of clarity. O'Connor wrote and recorded "The Emperor's New Clothes" before she truly became a pop star and a household name, but she wrote the truth. We know that because we saw the way the rest of her story played out.