The Lion & The Cobra

Sinead O’Connor had been a notable presence on the Dublin scene, but few could have expected the young Ensign signing to produce such an ambitious, turbulent and mercurial debut album. O’Connor swapped masks and clothes with impunity: now a punk harpy, now a folk keener, now a neo-classical chanteuse. But that astonishing voice was the through-line. O’Connor could play the missing link between the natural mystics (she was Van’s orphan on ‘Just Like You Said It Would Be’) and the post-punks (‘Mandinka’, with its dirty Marco Pirroni riff). And with ‘I Want Your Hands On Me’ she was arguably the first Irish artist to explicitly express kinship with hip-hop. But the showstopper was a furious, recriminatory ‘Troy’ with its Yeats’ steals, flaming strings and gooseflesh vocal. Hell had no fury like a woman shorn.

No 18 in 2009, as voted for by over 200 Irish musicians. Down from No 11 in 2004.