A siren. That's what Sinead O'Connor was. 'Was' feels so wrong. I reckon Sinead O'Connor could have been one of the most important voices I have ever come across in my lifetime. Hers was a voice that wouldn't stop, even when it would have saved her, her voice did not stop. She had a voice like an angel on fire. I think something happens sometimes when a person is born to this world with a weapon (we'd call it 'talent') that they can't be protected from, because the world that the weapon exists in wants to own it, wants to control it, wants to manipulate it, wants to direct it, wants to discredit it, wants to copy and pervert it, wants to soften it, or make it louder, and eventually wants to kill it off entirely. But when the weapon is your means of breathing, when it's the thing that propels you forward, when it is the reason that you can take on another day, losing that weapon is inconceivable. “To say what you feel is to dig your own grave,” she once sang. She knew it, too.
Sinead O'Connor had a gift. It is the case that Nothing Compares 2 U became the song it was, rendering Sinead the least willing popstar in the history of pop music, because she sung it. Nobody else should have tried. She knew the world was cruel. She experienced life's brutalities as a child, and she longed for something better. Not just for herself, but for the people and the causes she attached herself to as her fellow kindred outcast spirits. She refused to accept the status quo, even when it stood to bestow upon her the things others crave so deeply. Fame. Fortune. Success. In fact, she refused to accept the status quo because it could grant her those things. Those were not the things that mattered to her. She cared about connection, about why, she searched for meaning where there seemed to be none at all.
I met Sinead some years ago now. She called me from her home in Ireland. I asked her about her mental health struggles, and I told her that I'd like to know what she thought the entertainment industry could do better to protect the mental health of its artists. And I am still floored by her response. She told me that in four decades of working in the industry, not a single person had ever asked her that. Not one person had asked for her input on what might be helpful to artists who suffer like she did. For months afterwards, Sinead would message me. She always ended her thoughts with an emoji of a pink daisy. She had a lot to say. Still. She really wanted to speak truth to power. I think perhaps she was fatigued. Her career while packed with accolades and ideas about her iconoclasm, was a story of constant rebellion and subsequent backlash. She was punished for her every act of defiance, until the thing – the weapon – became a poisoned chalice.
After her infamous SNL moment, in which she tore up a picture of the Pope on live TV while singing War by Bob Marley, she was due to appear at a Bob Dylan tribute concert.
Bob Dylan was her formative songwriting hero. And as she took the stage she was met with rapturous booing, and nevertheless stood onstage in the face of it and – again – hollered War by Bob Marley over the jeers. Madonna ridiculed her. The press cast her off as a lunatic. Nothing but an angry woman with a shaved head who was clearly unhinged. There was no appetite to understand where her rage came from, or why it was so imperative for her to use her biggest ever platform to talk about the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church; an institution that abused her as a child. And she was right by the way. About all of it. The trailblazers always are.
When I went to see Sinead play in Los Angeles at an old Downtown theatre a few years ago, my breath was stolen by the strength of her voice. She sang Black Boys On Mopeds and Jealous and The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance in her bare feet, and her voice charged at me like a bull. I bought a ticket. It was the best $50 I've ever spent.
We did not do enough to take care of Sinead. She represented the fragility in all of us. She deserved a lot more than she got. It's on us to make sure her voice, her gift, her weapon carries forward.
15 when the Lion and the Cobra came out - still love it. The energy and layers of sound are just everything. And obviously the voice over it all. And I saw her in SNL and I was in awe. I could not believe someone had actually done in public the taboo thing so many thought. I didn’t agree with all her politics in later life but I always admired her bravery and desire to help others. With all her troubles, once she lost her son I figured she would be dead soon as well. I’m sure that if she did not kill herself she died of a heart attack brought on by years of stress, smoking, and total heartbreak. RIP🖤
I watched her fight the real enemy on SNL that very night and cheered her on right from my couch!! 'The Emperor's New Clothes' is my favorite song of hers. RIP Sinead...😎