Fire on Babylon
Feb 3rd, 2010 by admin
This is a song of liberation, of deep and anguished longings for justice. Some believe “Babylon” (from the book of Revelation in the Christian Bible) is the United States. Some believe Babylon is the Roman Catholic Church. Some believe Babylon to be colonizers, the rich and powerful. Sinead’s “Babylon” is about child abuse (she herself was abused by her mother); it is the cry of the tortured and battered child. Babylon, to me, is a metaphor for the powerful, the violent, cruel and corrupt, all those who destroy people, the earth, the skies and oceans, the creatures, who harm and kill the vulnerable and marginalized, and who do not for one moment care about the devastation they cause, who glory in it.
Sinead is magnificent in her resistance, defiance and passion every time she sings this song. From my perspective, she is a hero in a million ways, starting with shaving her head when nobody was shaving their heads, decades ago, continuing on with her fierce and relentless advocacy for battered and abused children, then on to the time she ended a Saturday Night Live performance by ripping up a photo of the Pope and cursing the Roman Catholic Church for its sexual abuse of the innocent. Along the way, she had four children, each by a different man, because she felt like it. And all the while she created amazing, passionate, brilliant song after amazing, passionate, brilliant song. She is an amazing, incredible woman who made her own life with her own hands. I find during this time of my life, I can’t get enough of her music.
She took my father from my life oh
Took my sister and brothers oh
I watched her torturing my child
Feeble I was then but now I’m grown
Fire on Babylon
Oh yes a change has come
Fire on Babylon …
Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered
Let them also that hate him flee before him
As smoke is driven away, so drive them away
As wax melteth before the fire
So let the wicked flee before the Lord
Heart
Yes! Sinead is so, so, so brilliant and wonderful — I saw her in concert a few years ago, and she was incredible. I also love how she took a bunch of traditional Irish songs that are typically sung by men and remade them without changing pronouns or anything.
I’ve been thinking of her SNL performance a lot lately, every time I read another article about how they’ve supposedly only recently realized the magnitude of the abuse in the Irish church, and I just want to scream BULLSHIT! at everyone’s shock. Maybe if people had been interested in listening to Sinead back then rather than dismissing her as some crazy woman (because only crazy women shave their heads!) at least some suffering could have been avoided. Instead people saw what they wanted to see — a crazy woman, and good Christian men who would NEVER allow such things.