There’s a candid moment in Nothing Compares, the 2022 documentary by Kathryn Ferguson about the life and career of Sinéad O’Connor, when the singer says, “It was such a shock for me to become a pop star. It’s not what I wanted. I just wanted to scream.” O’Connor, who died yesterday at the age of 56, became famous in the late ’80s, when she was barely out of her teens. In 1990, her cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” became not only her signature song, but also a chart-topper in numerous countries—a sweep that thrust a shy Irish kid under the hot sun of international scrutiny.

Rather than moderate her voice, she kept screaming. And over the years, her many controversial protests and statements tended to overshadow her breathtaking body of work. When people vow to murder you (as they did when she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live) and Frank Sinatra publicly threatens to assault you (as he did when she refused to have the American national anthem played at a New Jersey concert in 1990), it’s hard to direct attention back to the thing that actually made you famous: your music.

The fact that she became a pop star—and not just any pop star, but one of the most distinct, most outspoken, and most influential of all time—may have been a surprise to her. But it couldn’t have been a surprise to her fans. Few things made that clearer than her first hit, “Mandinka.” The song, which became a Top 20 hit in the United Kingdom, was the standout single and obvious earworm from her superb 1987 debut LP, The Lion and the Cobra. It was an ambitious album, collecting dark accounts of childhood trauma (“Troy”) and layered explorations of lust and consent (“I Want Your (Hands on Me)”). Amid these deeper, more demanding singles, The Lion and the Cobra needed an upbeat invitation. “Mandinka” was it.

Written when she was still a teenager struggling to make her way as an aspiring expat in London, “Mandinka” is a propulsive anthem that straddles pop and the loosely knit genre of alternative rock, which wouldn’t see its full commercial triumph until the ’90s. The lyrics don’t convey a narrative as such, but like so many of O’Connor’s songs, “Mandinka” synthesizes and projects a string of images, recriminations, and mantras. What coalesces in her words is a barrage of beefs with the patriarchy that refuses to sacrifice poetry for purpose. The title comes from Alex Haley’s Roots, which mentions the Gambian ethnic group of Mandinka. “Mandinka” was slightly ahead of its time, but it’s also very much in the same camp as contemporaneous songs such as Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance” and Enya’s “Orinoco Flow.” (Unsurprisingly, her fellow Irish artist Enya made a guest appearance on The Lion and the Cobra.)

“Mandinka,” at its core, is a song of defiance. O’Connor threw every bit of texture and range—snarling, chanting, cooing, and, yes, screaming—she could into the song, and the result was a smack in the face of conventionality. Hurt is part of the DNA of “Mandinka,” even as O’Connor exults in her power to withstand it: “I don’t know no shame / I feel no pain / I can’t see the flame,” she sings with venom. Again, defiance. But it’s not a denial or some bluff—instead, it’s an acknowledgement of how she’s proudly used her scar tissue as raw material.

[Read: How “Nothing Compares 2 U” endured]

“Soon I can give you my heart,” O’Connor chants at the end of “Mandinka.” That’s exactly what she did: The lushly romantic “Nothing Compares 2 U” came out three years later, becoming the song that most people immediately think of when they hear O’Connor’s name. But the power of “Nothing Compares 2 U” partly stemmed from the fact that O’Connor had already proved herself capable of far greater force on The Lion and the Cobra, and in “Mandinka” in particular. Her first appearance on U.S. television was on Late Night With David Letterman, and her performance of the single is telling. She wears a spiked denim jacket like punk-rock armor, holding her arms in front of her and twisting back and forth like she’s dodging blows in a boxing ring.

Perhaps the most succinct tribute to the impact of “Mandinka” is a video of Fiona Apple, posted to YouTube in 2017. In it, Apple lies in bed with her laptop while singing and air-punching along to O’Connor’s 1989 Grammy performance. It was a historic one: Nominated that year for Best Female Rock Vocal, O’Connor infamously drew Public Enemy’s bull’s-eye logo on her head to protest the fact that the newly minted Grammy for Best Rap Performance was awarded off camera. (On Twitter yesterday, the group’s Chuck D and Flavor Flav both remembered the protest.)

When the chorus hits, Apple ups the volume and kisses the screen. It’s a gesture of joyous release and empowerment that mirrors the song itself. “I didn’t mean to be strong,” O’Connor says at the start of Ferguson’s documentary. “I wasn’t thinking to myself, I must be strong. I didn’t know I was strong.” All it takes is one listen to “Mandinka,” though, for anyone else to know, feel, and find themselves strengthened by her strength.

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