"Troy" is a song written and recorded by Sinéad O'Connor

Sinéad O'Connor

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor is an Irish singer-songwriter. She rose to fame in the late 1980s with her debut album The Lion and the Cobra and achieved worldwide success in 1990 with a cover of the song "Nothing Compares 2 U"....

, the first single from her 1987 debut album, The Lion and the Cobra

The Lion and the Cobra

The Lion and the Cobra is the 1987 debut album by Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor. O'Connor, age 20 at the time, recorded the album while heavily pregnant with her first child....

. In 2002, a dance version of the song released as "Troy (The Phoenix from the Flame)" becoming a top 10 hit on several international dance charts including the US.

Background

The song uses the story of the ancient city of Troy

Troy

Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...

 as a metaphor. The lyric "Being what you are, there is no other Troy for you to burn" is a reference to the poem No Second Troy by William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

 ("Why, what could she have done being what she is?/Was there another Troy for her to burn?")

Music video

The video featured O'Connor, completely bald and covered with gold and silver body paint, singing to a background of moving images including flames. The video's striking imagery of this angry, bald young woman was for many their first and most striking introduction to O'Connor.

Live performances

O'Connor only sang "Troy" live the year after it was released, after that she refused to perform "Troy" again until 2008 when she performed at the Night of the Proms

Night of the Proms

Night of the Proms is a series of concerts held yearly in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Poland. Regularly there are also shows in France, Spain, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg...

 in Belgium and The Netherlands.

Chart performance

Chart (1988) (Original version)	Peak position
Dutch GfK GfK The GfK Group, established in 1934 as Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung is Germany's largest market research institute, and the fourth largest market research organisation in the world, after Nielsen Company, Kantar Group, and IMS Health...  Charts	8
Dutch Top 40 Dutch Top 40 The Dutch Top 40 is a weekly music chart, which started as the "Veronica Top 40", because the offshore radio station Radio Veronica was the first to introduce it. It remained "The Veronica Top 40" until 1974, when the station was forced to stop broadcasting...	5
Chart (2002) (Remix version)	Peak position
Flemish Singles Chart	35
UK Singles Chart UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...	48
US Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play Hot Dance Club Play The Hot Dance Club Songs chart is a weekly national survey of the songs that are most popular in U.S. dance clubs...	3
US Billboard Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales Hot Dance Singles Sales Hot Dance Singles Sales is a chart released weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States, established in 1985. It measures the sale of commercially released singles that deal with dance music and remixes...	6

External links

• Lyrics