The Times March 9, 1990, Friday Irish lark with a soulful song David Sinclair Sinead O'Connor: I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (Ensign CHEN 14) With her phenomenally successful version of Prince's ''Nothing Compares 2 U'', the scrawny, shaven-headed Irish waif with a voice as clear and bracing as a bright winter's morning turned traditional poprock values on their head. That song, which opens her album's second side, delineates a life in emotional tatters. Its static, full-facial video, apart from making her look like a frightened gazelle, steers the listener into the confessional rather than on to the dance floor. It is a good indication of the collection as a whole, since most of the album's songs progress at roughly the same funereal pace and strike a similarly bleak emotional tenor. ''Feel So Different'' is a carefully orchestrated pastorale that conveys a mood of introspection born of betrayal. ''Three Babies'' has distinct religious overtones and a quietly reverential feel, while the title track, which she sings in an uncomfortably exposed a cappella, is a pure statement of faith, O'Connor's customized version of Psalm 23, with a desert substituting for the valley of the shadow of death. In the main she gets away with these intense bouts of post-adolescent profundity by dint of her mesmeric presence. ''I Am Stretched Across Your Grave'' adapts a traditional Gaelic poem to a shuffling neo-hiphop drum beat, a riveting combination once it has claimed your attention. Less impressive is ''Black Boys on Mopeds'', a gratuitous piece of England-bashing that intemperately likens Margret (sic) Thatcher to the mandarins in Bejing (sic).