Trouble Of The World

Album: Mahalia Jackson Sings America's Favorite Hymns (1959)
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Songfacts®:

  • The traditional spiritual was originally sung by enslaved African Americans. It carries a message of hope and emancipation that one day they would leave all their troubles behind when they die and go to heaven. Not only will they go to live with the Lord, but they will be reunited with their mothers.
  • Mahalia Jackson made the gospel song famous in the 1959 film Imitation Of Life. The Queen of Gospel played a church choir soloist performing the hymn at a lavish funeral while the congregation sob and dab at their eyes.
  • Sinead O'Connor recorded "Trouble Of The World" in aid of the Black Lives Matter movement and as a tribute to Mahalia Jackson. Her first single in six years, she released it on October 2, 2020.

    "There became this incredible movement that I found really moving with these women in the streets saying that when George Floyd called his mother, he called all the mothers, she explained to Mojo magazine. "It made me feel that this was the right time to release a record, because my Mahalia was a very strong mothering figure and a huge figure in the Civil Rights Movement."

    O'Connor added it is not a bleak song. "It's written that the world will become the Garden of Eden which it was intended to be, and that to me is what the song is saying."

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