It’s her birthday today. I’ll never be over it.
If you were there, then you remember the singular moment when Sinéad O’Connor arrived on the world stage. It wasn’t like the appearance of any other “big star”. It was different. She came from seemingly nowhere. Her voice was eerie and transcendent. She was drop-dead gorgeous. Her head was shaved, a protest against objectification, an announcement she would not be just another “pop star”. She insisted she wasn’t a pop star at all. “I’m a protest singer,” she said. She arrived fully formed into a world with no place for her. She created her own place. Yes, but she also so obviously came from somewhere specific. Ireland was always with her. And as a teenager who was steeped in Irish history, via my dad, including a stint there when I was a freshman in high school, there was something very familiar about her. The second she arrived, you couldn’t imagine what it was like before she got there. That’s how it was when Sinéad O’Connor walked onto the world stage.
If I had to talk about favorite songs … there are so many. “Troy” blows your hair back. “Red Football.” Protest. “This is the Last Day of Our Acquaintance.” Personal. “Famine.” Political. “Scorn Not His Simplicity.” “Black Boys on Mopeds.” Political. “Daddy I’m Fine.” “No Man’s Woman.” “4th and Vine.”
She torched her career when she tore up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live.
But she was fucking right.
And she was courageous enough to say it out loud when nobody wanted to hear it, when people were still propping up evil, defending and denying it. It would be 30 years before the world finally realized what had been going on. 30 years nobody listened. She ruined her career for it. Where were all the apologies owed her when the truth came out, once and for all?
“As long as the house of The Holy Spirit remains a haven for criminals the reputation of the church will remain in ruins.” — Sinéad O’Connor
She continued making records. She came out with an album of Irish traditional songs, she came out with a quasi-reggae album. She recorded with the haunting monks of Glenstal Abbey (if you don’t know, please seek it out). She was a constant searcher. Religion had hurt her. She was raised in what was practically a theocracy. Her rebellion was Joycean in its complete rejection. She still yearned for it though. She found solace in other religions. Her desire for a relationship with God was paramount. People thought she was “crazy”. When she died, much of the commentary was enraging. And as I said after she died: do not come on my site and talk about her “demons”, even if you mean it sympathetically. If that’s your framing of her, that she battled her “demons”, finally losing her battle to her “demons” – meaning mental health issues and depression – then I must remind you, and it’s not a discussion: The world was the demon. The world did this to her.
Clear your schedule to watch her late-in-the-game performance of “Nothing Compares 2 U”.
My brother wrote an essay about her album The Lion and the Cobra.
Sinéad O’Connor deserved better. The world showed its true colors in response to her, as it always does when someone rejects the status quo, when someone tells the truth nobody wants to hear.
Let’s end with “Troy”. Hair-raising. Let’s listen to the recording of the song and then watch it live.
I will never stop being sad.
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I was watching SNL that night, when she tore up the photo. It remains the most compelling thing I’ve ever seen on television. She sang Bob Marley’s “War” a cappella. It was beautiful and breathtaking. She’s fearless and I love her for it.
I was watching SNL that night too and could not believe what I was seeing! I kept thinking – “wait, did that just happen?”
Totally fearless and good for her.
Absolutely right Sheila! And I am a lover of Sinead O’Connor too. In addition to the shock of the pope dis, it was also hilarious because of how shocking it was. I still get a giddy feeling from it. She was dead serious. But as a viewer, the idea of someone standing for their own truth at that time was completely unheard of. And SNL was not known as any serious platform for that. Now I can see, though she was prepared to stand on her principles, she was not prepared to sustain the critical dialogue she opened with a reactionary, dysfunctional media, and public. There’s so much to learn from her story. The new documentary does a great job of contextualizing what happened.
She’s owed some major apologies.
As soon as I heard today’s sad news, I came here. I knew you had to have written about her. I’ve quoted this piece today on my own site. She was one of those forces of nature that seems to come from nowhere…but she did come from somewhere, obviously…the Ireland that remembers many things, not all of them bright.
And dammit, she was RIGHT that night on the SNL stage.
I wish I had written more about her music and what it meant to me – she was one of those artists who was in constant rotation in my music collection – never really far from me. Universal Mother. Faith and Courage. The songs she recorded with the Monks of Glenstal Abbey. and of course Lion and the Cobra. and Gospel Oak. Am I Not Your Girl? so much music.
I’m still in awe of her courage. Can’t believe she’s gone.
it’s tragic.