The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Obituaries / Sinead O’Connor RIP

Sinead O’Connor RIP

by 109 Comments

Obituary

Sinead O’Connor RIP. News just breaking here in Ireland. Tragic.

0

Comments

  6. Am upset about this one. No doubt “Nothing Compares 2U’ will be played constantly in the next few weeks, but this one was always my favourite.

  9. From the same album as Nothing Compares 2 U, I go for this one:

    (although Mandinka is another favourite choice)

    And while I’m here, not only did she provide backing vocals for Jon Grant’s Pale Green Ghosts, she also covered Queen Of Denmark

    What a voice, what a talent, what a loss

  10. Terribly sad. A troubled soul but a massive talent. I was a bit obsessed with her when I was 15. Lion and the Cobra and I Do Not Want… are still very fine albums. I’ll be listening tonight. I’m also very fond of this late period banger.

  13. How terrible. The way her voice rang out on a typically sunny late midsummer afternoon on the Glastonbury pyramid stage with the audience completely spellbound is something I will never forget.

  15. I don’t know much about Sinead O’Connor. A few songs, some of her troubles. What I do know is I’ve never been able watch the video for Nothing Compares To You without it touching me deeply. She gave us something intensely personal through expression and song that went beyond pop music. RiP

  18. She was extraordinarily talented, one of the most amazing voices I’ve ever heard. Fire on Babylon is stunning. This is also a firm favourite:

  19. One of the most punk non-punk artists ever, a maverick firebrand. I’d be lying if I said I listened to her records a lot, but I have loads of respect for her talent and empathy for her troubles. Hope she does rest in peace.

  20. Desperatly sad news. I went through a phase of buying Sineads back catalogue a few years ago, as I felt i`d missed out on something. A wonderful voice, unique artist and great collaborator.

  22. A sadly-common AW situation: complex and storied artists being reduced in the media to the usual soundbites: Nothing Compares, the shaved head, the “controversial” views, the Bob Dylan concert, the picture of the pope. So much more to the woman than that. At least much of the focus of what I’ve read is on that voice and that courage.

  23. Shocking; my favourite female singer by a mile, captivating and enduringly endearing. Love the smile at the end of this, only a year or 2 back:

    (2019, shockingly)
    Going to Cambridge Folk Festival tomorrow, the last time and place I saw her play live, 2015, I think, as incandescent as ever, in a set of then largely new material.

  24. BP Fallon was very upset on the RTE news. A very moving live interview. He said there was a new album ready for release – such a pity. She was one of the world’s best vocalists and yet in Ireland she was ridiculed and dismissed as much as she was admired. Such is the way of the world. You don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone. This is the song I fell in love with from her second album…

    • Yes, new album is in the can and she’d recently moved back to London to further her career, after decades living in Ireland.

      There’s also a I Do Not Want… Super Deluxe in the can, trailed by a live EP for RSD 2021, and then put on hold following the death of her son.

  25. Oh no – one of my favourite artists full stop. I don’t have all of her albums, but eight of them, all brilliant. Awfully sad news. You can say that she has peace now – but I wish she could have found that in life, before the eternal sleep.

  27. A recent post of hers in twitter. A ten minute prayer for the suffering she has brought to others and the suffering brought to ger.

  30. Didn’t expect this news; it’s very sad. One of those artists that I didn’t exactly follow but enjoyed hearing, like this song blaring out from my sister’s bedroom:

  32. “She had only so much ‘self’ to give. She was dropped by her label after selling 7 million albums for them. She became crazed, yes, but uninteresting, never. She had done nothing wrong. She had proud vulnerability … and there is a certain music industry hatred for singers who don’t ‘fit in’ (this I know only too well), and they are never praised until death – when, finally, they can’t answer back. The cruel playpen of fame gushes with praise for Sinead today … with the usual moronic labels of “icon” and “legend”. You praise her now ONLY because it is too late. You hadn’t the guts to support her when she was alive and she was looking for you. The press will label artists as pests because of what they withhold … and they would call Sinead sad, fat, shocking, insane … oh but not today! Music CEOs who had put on their most charming smile as they refused her for their roster are queuing-up to call her a “feminist icon”, and 15 minute celebrities and goblins from hell and record labels of artificially aroused diversity are squeezing onto Twitter to twitter their jibber-jabber … when it was YOU who talked Sinead into giving up … because she refused to be labelled, and she was degraded, as those few who move the world are always degraded. Why is ANYBODY surprised that Sinead O’Connor is dead? Who cared enough to save Judy Garland, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe, Billie Holiday? Where do you go when death can be the best outcome? Was this music madness worth Sinead’s life? No, it wasn’t. She was a challenge, and she couldn’t be boxed-up, and she had the courage to speak when everyone else stayed safely silent. She was harassed simply for being herself. Her eyes finally closed in search of a soul she could call her own. As always, the lamestreamers miss the ringing point, and with locked jaws they return to the insultingly stupid “icon” and “legend” when last week words far more cruel and dismissive would have done. Tomorrow the fawning fops flip back to their online shitposts and their cosy Cancer Culture and their moral superiority and their obituaries of parroted vomit … all of which will catch you lying on days like today … when Sinead doesn’t need your sterile slop.”

    MORRISSEY
    26 July, 2023.

      • Fair play to Morrissey… he cites five people and whadya know? They’re all female.

        Lost in the mists of time now, but Dusty was vilified for refusing to perform in front of segregated audiences.

    • Sinead was all about love & acceptance if she was about anything.
      I seriously doubt she’d appreciate any kind of ‘tribute’ from the vile creep that S Morrissey Esq evolved into.

      • I think it proves that Morrissey can get it right some of the time, maybe once in a blue moon. Whatever Sinead O’Connor was, she was often equally controversial and she herself would probably admit she didn’t always get everything right all the time

        • Sadly, I can only conclude that a little decoding indicates that, as Black Type says below, he’s made it about him – the embarrassing use of terms like ‘lamestreamers’ & ‘cancer culture’ translate as precisely his view of how he seems himself as maligned & even persecuted by brutes & Philistines.

          He may not be incorrect about artists being regarded as commodities to be discarded when they aren’t deemed profitable or pliable, but there’s a time & a place & it would be nice if he’d waited until she was cold before holding forth, IMO.

          • Unless we know somebody well enough to be able to quote their own words, we are bound to present them as they are to us, through our eyes and ears, and thoughts – we do make it about ourselves – whether that’s the first time we heard her records or a particularly striking concert performance we experienced or as a controversial singer who sees parallels between his and her lives. That’s his perspective, so he’s referencing that. Let him. His good points will stand for themselves, the OTT parts just reflect who he is, not her.

            Most importantly, from my perspective, is that she was someone who moved him enough to respond quickly and instinctively. Amanda Palmer did the same, and I prefer what she said, in a similar vein. But they are both expressing in their ways, a sorrow that many, many others seem to share.

            • This is probably right.

              It’s striking reading the various obits the extent to which people seek to filter the death, and the deceased, through the lens of the self.

              Here’s why Sinead O’Connor was important to me. Here’s what you will never understand about her. I mourn her as a Muslim. I mourn her as a woman. I mourn her as a proud Irish person, etc. Morrissey is doing exactly the same thing above, except in his case he’s mourning her as a fellow music industry outsider and perceived contrarian.

              He’s also not entirely wrong; there will be plenty of people this week lining up to lavish praise upon O’Connor for her bravery who would be the first to eye the carpet if a contemporary musician took an equivalently career-limiting stand. We like to take a free ride off the courage of others, to bask in the soothing glow of its proximity, but when tested how many of us would really have the sense of self to do what she did, or even to offer support if that support had a price attached? Vanishingly few, would be my guess.

              We live in a world of far too much talk, and far too little walk.

              • It’s to your credit that you’re able to judge his take according to your own decent standards & see him essentially as an honest broker.
                Personally, I wouldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt over anything. Leaving aside his Fascist fellow traveler credentials, I’m pretty sure Judge Weeks who described him as ‘devious, truculent & unreliable’ was pretty much on the money.

                • I would certainly stop short of honest broker, and I can’t imagine an hour trapped in a lift with him would be particularly enjoyable.

                  What I do find intriguing is that he asks who cared to save Whitney Houston. In his rush to excoriate those who come to serve respectful platitudes only following an artist’s untimely demise he appears to have forgotten that when Whitney was actually alive, he had the following to say about her:

                  “I hate all those records in the Top 40 — Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston. I think they’re vile in the extreme. In essence this music doesn’t say anything whatsoever. I don’t think there’s any time any more to be subtle about anything. You have to get straight to the point. Obviously, to get on Top of the Pops these days one has to be, by law, black.”

                  As attempts to save Whitney Houston go, it certainly has its limits.

                  • I’m certain I remember him saying, back in the mid-eighties sometime that reggae was “vile”. That was my first inkling that Morrissey was a c*nt.

                    • I concur, Mike.
                      Also, however much I try, I can’t conjure up an image of him listening to Lady Day – she would appear to epitomise music that says nothing to him about his life.

      • He said it all so much better in 1988…

        At the record company meeting
        On their hands – a dead star
        And oh, the plans they weave
        And oh, the sickening greed
        At the record company party
        On their hands – a dead star
        The sycophantic slags all say :
        “I knew him first, and I knew him well”
        Re-issue! Re-package! Re-package!
        Re-evaluate the songs
        Double-pack with a photograph
        Extra track (and a tacky badge)
        A-list, playlist
        “Please them , please them !”
        “Please them !”
        (sadly, this was your life)
        But you could have said no
        If you’d wanted to
        You could have said no
        If you’d wanted to
        BPI, MTV, BBC
        “Please them ! Please then!”
        (sadly this was your life)
        But you could have said no
        If you’d wanted to
        You could have walked away
        …Couldn’t you?
        I touched you at the soundcheck
        You had no real way of knowing
        In my heart I begged “Take me with you …
        I don’t care where you’re going…”
        But to you I was faceless
        I was fawning, I was boring
        Just a child from those ugly new houses
        Who could never begin to know
        Who could never really know
        Oh…
        Best of! Most of!
        Satiate the need
        Slip them into different sleeves!
        Buy both, and feel deceived
        Climber – new entry, re-entry
        World tour! (“media whore”)
        “Please the Press in Belgium!”
        (This was your life…)
        And when it fails to recoup ?
        Well, maybe :
        You just haven’t earned it yet, baby
        I walked a pace behind you at the soundcheck
        You’re just the same as I am
        What makes most people feel happy
        Leads us headlong into harm
        So, in my bedroom in those ‘ugly new houses’
        I danced my legs down to the knees
        But me and my ‘true love’
        Will never meet again…
        At the record company meeting
        On their hands – at last! – A dead star !
        But they can never taint you in my eyes
        No, they can never touch you now
        No, they cannot hurt you, my darling
        They cannot touch you now
        But me and my ‘true love’
        Will never meet again

  33. I saw the news last night as we were eating dinner in a restaurant on holiday..
    I have all of her albums – not all entirely brilliant but every one has something exceptional on it. I was speaking with Springer Bell late of this parish when I met him in Dublin back in March and we spoke about artists we hadn’t seen that we most wanted to see.
    She was right at the top of my list and it saddens me that will now never happen. Her autobiography was very good and quite visceral as you would expect. But also very funny in parts.
    Universal mother is a monster record and will be playing it later.
    God Bless Sinead.

  34. An incredible artist & such sad news.

    Just yesterday I was listening to this wonderful James track that she sang on & her voice with Tim Booths is beautiful

    James feat Sinead O’Connor – I Defeat

  35. Funny, we watched a documentary about her recently. So sweet in those old clips when young. So ahead of her time I thought. Now her approach is more familiar, what is said seems more reasonsble, but a woman saying that couldn’t be tolerated and had to be villified vicously. Easier for a man. Too brave for her own good. You can see it clearly now but then it was harder to fathom.

    • The documentary is called Nothing Compares by the way and is pretty good. Worth seeing. It lets us know her better and understand her a bit more. Like good documentaries often do it leaves you feeling you like this person more. It’s been on Swedish TV. Don’t know if or where it can be seen in the UK. A lot of the hostility she received in the US was down to her refusing to have the national anthem played before her performance at an event which was the usual routine before the first act.

  36. Shocked to hear this news. I bought The Lion… when it came out and have followed her music ever since, through many highs and a few lows. What an iconoclast. What a voice. What a human being. Condolences to all who loved her.

  39. Came across this playful and quite touching performance of Have I Told You Lately with a surprisingly upbeat Van and a very young Sinead. Backed by the Chieftains. It’s rather fab

  41. An oddly mean-spirited obituary in the Guardian, focusing on negatives and disapointments.

    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/26/sinead-oconnor-obituary

    Offset by much a more affectionate and positive appraisal from Alexis Petridis and a great piece from Simon Hattenstone from the same newspaper. Odd.

    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/26/controversy-never-drowned-out-the-astonishing-songcraft-of-sinead-oconnor

    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/27/sinead-oconnor-mental-health-struggles-parental-abuse

    • ““Her name has become synonymous with courage and integrity,” Kristofferson said that night, but O’Connor never had another hit record in the US. Time proved her right about the church’s complicity in the abuse of children – in the early 1990s, however, she was perceived by many simply as an eccentric with an axe to grind. O’Connor could have appeased America by releasing another album in the vein of I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, but her next records were a jazz covers album, Am I Not Your Girl? (1992), and the grim Universal Mother (1994)…”

      What a spectacularly bone-headed and ill thought-through piece of writing that is.

    • Unlike the obit, Petridis’ piece is excellent on the music and is as good a recognition of her as a singer, songwriter and musician as I have seen today:

      ‘That she was never hailed as one of the great – and certainly one of the most fearless – song interpreters of her era seems faintly astonishing.’

      The problem is that as the obit shows, her personal life, vulnerability and controversy were much more interesting for too many people than the actual music.

      I saw O’Connor in concert three times. At each concert she was nervous and uncomfortable at times on stage – but she still sang like an angel.

    • The Guardian are such wankers. Printing a mean spirited obituary (for the not the first time), whilst they moralise ridiculously at us the rest of the time
      I despise them

      Same obit writer also did a shit piece after Sarah Harding died

    • Dylan Jones’ obit in the Evening Standard has annoyed me somewhat;

      ‘She was, let’s be fair, a one-hit wonder, but that hit was so influential, so all-encompassing, and – for a generation of young people who were reacting against the slickness of 1980s pop culture – completely empowering.’

      A one-hit wonder? Whigfield was a one-hit wonder you clown!

      • A pedant writes: Whigfield had six UK top 40 hits, one at number 68, and is still releasing singles now (whatever that means nowadays). Incredibly.

        But you’re right, I can only remember one of them.

        • I will admit to checking this after my post & being surprised how many chart hits she has had. I correct this to Doop (a bona fide 1 hit wonder)

          I usually like Dylan Jones’ writing but i thought this was an odd thing to say when the evidence is clearly otherwise. I think even most casual fans could name a few tracks

    • I want to know what is contained in those three dots – “…” – cos she’s only got him 1% sussed in the previous sentence!

      Tabloids… the death of this country. RIP Sinead O’Connor – RIP this country. She outlived this country.

    • Another riposte to Moron:

      Last year, the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer reportedly shared a screenshot of an email she sent one of Morgan’s producers on Twitter after they requested her appearance on the ITV morning show, which Morgan left in 2021.

      “I think it’s best I don’t do your show because of the irresistible temptation I would have to point out that you’re dying to be balls deep in Meghan Markle so bad it’s driven you crazy, and that your dislike of Prince Harry is down to his being balls deep in her ten times a day,” the note read.

      “It being the case that if you were ever to get near her, which would never happen, you’d last ten seconds: and that would be that for ten days.”

  43. I put I Do Not Want… on loud for the first time in 20-odd years and track two, I Am Stretched On Your Grave, had me back in a kitchen in Auckland, New Zealand, dancing like a loon and marvelling at the balls of this tiny little scary baldy Irish girl all over again. I’d completely forgotten how brilliant this album is, and I’m ashamed to say, that’s probably because it’s by a woman and in those days I could only hear men.

  45. From Kris Kristoferson the only person at Madison Square Gardens that night who had the balls to stand up for her, that rarest and most wonderful of things, a tribute that was written when its subject was still around to hear it

    “And maybe she’s crazy, and maybe she ain’t/
    But so was Picasso and so were the saints”

    • @salwarpe
      @junior-wells

      I remember waking up the morning after a wedding in the UK to learn that Princess Diana (the People’s Princess, the Queen of All our Hearts, etc, etc) had died. There being no internet to speak of back then, we stopped off on the way home and bought all the papers, many of which had 4 page stop press wrap arounds.

      Past that point it was the usual old guff. Can remember one female columnist writing that if “Di’s intelligence was any lower, you’d have to stick her on a windowsill and water her once a week”. The very next day that very same female journo was spouting woe-are-we platitudes in one of the most brazen reverse ferrets I have ever seen

  50. This is an intriguing listen. David McWilliams is an Irish economist who grew up in the same part of Dublin as Sinead, and who shared family connections. He looks at her role as a musician doing something more than entertaining – as activism, as protest, as deeply cultural and links that all the way back to Stone Age culture, when music was a means to enable successful hunting.
    https://shows.acast.com/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast/episodes/music-and-stone-age-economics

Leave a Reply