There have been very few singers who in my lifetime courted as much controversy as Sinéad O’Connor. There was a very big difference between her contemporaries who shocked their audience for the sake of shock factor alone like Marilyn Manson (now known as a prolific rapist).
As a child In the 1990s, Sinéad O’Connor stuck into my memory as the female singer who tore the picture of the Pope on stage. Nowadays, it is obvious why she courted so much controversy, and it wasn’t because she tore the picture of the Pope; it was because she was an uninhibited woman – a rare breed at a time when female singers and entertainers were expected to impress their audiences by their beauty and extravagance more than with their music.
Sinéad was different. She shaved her head and dressed like a young man: trousers, boots, and a sleeveless shirt. And she sang songs that broke our hearts and mesmerised our souls. She spat in the face of the whole music industry as she forced her audience to listen to her voice instead of looking at her as a piece of flesh. This was unusual, yet Sinéad broke the line. As I grew up, she was one of the first artists I listened to regularly. Her music was everywhere. She was inevitable. A tour de force producing some of the most emotional tunes and poems we listened to at that time.
She was punished for her antics, independence, and rebellion, and severely so. Music industry executives haggled with her until she opted to leave the industry altogether. Her partners abused her and took advantage of her goodwill and golden heart. Her audience pressured her to produce more record-breaking tracks and she found it extremely difficult to keep up with the expectations that many executives put on her. She was tormented and exploited. When she went through a mental breakdown, the paparazzi and the press hounded her and threw her privacy in the dustbin making her struggles more difficult. The world was very cruel to her.
The Irish, her own people hated her most. Not only did she insult them by offending their beloved Pope, but she also produced a song against war which back then was intended as a critique of her fellow Irish Republicans who believed in the war against the UK. She didn’t sing Irish patriotic songs as her compatriots expected her to, – she sang against them.
Yet, she never stopped producing music. She never stopped her beating-loving passion for music and art. She kept going in the ways she could, picking up the pieces and making what she could from her past mishaps.
She was incredible and magnificent. A veritable tour de force who conquered our hearts and made us cry over and over again.
What an incredible human being.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
Leave a Reply