Here's a brief but interesting review about "This IS A Rebel Song", written by Steven Wells and published in the NME this week ( for the completists, it also includes a small picture of Sinead!).

"SINEAD O'CONNOR - This IS A Rebel Song This is superb - and what's the betting that it won't get played anywhere in the UK? Not that it'll be censored, you understand, it's just that any art or commentory about Northern Ireland which dares to even hint at the truth (that the mess is a British problem caused by British imperialism) tends to always somehow fall between the cracks. This isn't an angry rant. O'Connor addresses her complaints quietly to her "hard Englishman" with a reasoned and measured tone that belies the painful lyrics. Twenty years ago the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland attempted to protest peacefully against what was virtually an apartheid state. They got their faces smashed, their skulls caved in and their homes burnt down by Loyalist mobs led by RUC officers. Ethnic cleansing, anybody? Enter the British Army and internment, Diplock Courts, strip searches and, according to Amnesty International, 'interrogation' techniques that bordered on torture - all directed against the Catholic minority naturally. Enter the Provisional IRA. Since then, both sides - that's BOTH sides - have been engaged in a futile terrorist war. The truth is a long, long way from the version of events we get from the tabloids, the BBC and Saint Bono. O'Connor must be more than aware of the pitfalls that yawn whenever pop attemps to comment intelligently on Northern Ireland - The Clash, Boney M and Sham 69 spring embarrassingly to mind. But despite that, she's succeeded. Which is more than can be said for U2's pathetic and craven 'Sunday Bloody Sunday (This Is Not A Rebel Song)' to which, we must assume, this single is something of a reply. "