If y'all would look back into the glorious past with me for a moment, you may recall that Sinéad O'Connor was once a crushing, powerful force, fangs dripping venom, seething with vicious rage, illuminated by Virginia Woolf's red light of emotion. Her voice rang out for a million of us discontented youths, her passion eclipsed only by the articulateness we desperately longed for.

Her 1987 debut, The Lion and the Cobra, ignited like spray paint, and with the same haphazard juvenility. And the record's absurdly angstful lyrics were delivered with such raw conviction that they became altogether meaningless, and all that mattered was the searing agony we all felt together.

Ahh, adolescence. At no other point in life are our senses so heightened that one simple lyric and a perfect accompanying cadence can be so euphoric and earth-shattering. But Sinéad, even through I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, maintained her talent for angrily summarizing the inexplicable anguish felt by the world's teenagers.

You wouldn't have known from her radio-friendly cover of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U" that, on the rest of her album, this shave-headed Irish girl was pissing fire and brutal fury, but her first two records have since only been matched in intensity by Tori Amos (on Little Earthquakes) and PJ Harvey (on Rid of Me), both of whom were clearly influenced by her both vocally and lyrically. These days, Sinéad is nice. Too nice, in fact. And I don't know what the fuck happened, but I'm guessing she grew up. Ahh, adulthood.

Her recent albums sound like she's holding it all back for the sake of being a good girl, pathetically begging for acceptance from a public from which she will never receive it. Luckily, So Far makes us wade through only a two or three tracks of the recent crap, dumping almost all of Universal Mother and the entirety of her Gospel Oak EP in favor of the stuff that actually matters.

Songs like "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "Troy" are rightfully included here, as are some of the less effective but still moving tracks of O'Connor's career such as "Don't Cry For Me Argentina", "You Made Me The Thief of Your Heart", and the stirring "I Am Stretched on Your Grave". However, if you're truly looking for the best of Sinéad O'Connor, this collection leaves off most of it. Best pick up the albums themselves and leave this politically correct compilation for people who can't handle the wrath.