Irish singer and activist Sinéad O’Connor — best known for her 1990 hit Nothing Compares 2 U — has passed away at the age of 56, her family announced in a statement yesterday.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, O’Connor’s incandescent voice, buzz-cut charm and radical sincerity made her an icon of post-punk femininity, even as her outspoken defiance made her the target of a vicious hate campaign by her peers in the American media mainstream. Troubled by her experience with global stardom, and living with mental health issues including bipolar disorder, she retreated from the spotlight but continued to make artful, experimental, emotionally rewarding albums that tackled everything from love and religion to Irish republicanism and left-wing politics.
Many of O’Connor’s forthright stances have been vindicated in the years since, and O’Connor’s uncompromising artistic and political vision has continued to inspire generations of fans, as was evident in the outpouring of grief that followed news of her death. “Sinead was the true embodiment of a punk spirit,” wrote The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess, a contemporary of the Irish star, on Twitter. “She did not compromise and that made her life more of a struggle. Hoping that she has found peace x.”
Born in Dublin in 1966, O’Connor had a difficult childhood, facing “extreme” physical and mental abuse at the hands of her Catholic mother (who died in a car accident in 1985). At the age of 15, she was sent to a Magdalene asylum — infamous institutions that housed “fallen” (aka promiscuous) women — for 18 months, which is where she picked up music. By the mid-'80s, her band Ton Ton Macoute had caught the eye of several music industry executives, eventually leading to her signing a recording deal with Ensign Records.
O’Connor wrote, recorded and co-produced her debut record The Lion and the Cobra as a pregnant 21-year-old still mourning the complicated loss of an abusive mother. She poured all that emotion into the album’s nine tracks, marrying the intensity and agit-prop anger of punk rock with indelible pop melodies. Her voice was a force of nature in itself — powerful, seductive and awe-inspiring in equal measure — and she put it to great use with songwriting that castigated the sins of patriotism, the Catholic Church and the patriarchy.
The Lion and the Cobra was a critical success, charting in the US and UK top 40. But it was 1990’s follow-up I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got — and especially lead single Nothing Compares 2 U — that would catapult her to global stardom. Originally written by Prince as a straightforward song about romantic regret, Nothing Compares 2 U is transformed in O’Connor’s hands, becoming a devastating, gut-wrenching dirge about unimaginable loss, and finding the strength to carry on. It says something about the force of her voice and charisma — and the state of the world in 1990 — that such a harrowingly sad song became a global hit, topping charts in Ireland, Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
O’Connor’s uncompromising integrity and her will to speak truth to power would soon put her at odds with the mainstream media and culture industry. Her refusal to play the American national anthem before a show in New Jersey in 1990 — because of her distaste for nationalism — was met with a threat by Frank Sinatra to “kick her ass”. At her first performance at the Grammys in 1989, she had rap group Public Enemy’s logo shaved into the side of her head, in protest against the decision to not air the hip-hop category. She would boycott the awards in 1991 for their crass commercialism, and often took potshots at sacred cows like U2 for their faux-radicalism.
It was her performance at Saturday Night Live in 1992 that proved to be the last straw. After a haunting a-capella performance of Bob Marley’s War — with lyrics slightly altered to reference the then-surfacing child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church — O’Connor held up a photo of Pope John Paul II and ripped it to shreds. “Fight the real enemy!” she declared, staring straight into the camera. The photo was taken from the wall above the bed of her late mother — a God-fearing woman who had abused her children for years — and destroying it was a powerful act of protest against Church-sanctioned sexual abuse.
The backlash was instant and vicious. The New York Daily News called the performance a “Holy Terror”. On next week’s episode, Joe Pesci held up the photo — taped back together — and joked that if he was on set he would have given O’Connor “such a smack.” She faced brutal attacks from Frank Sinatra, Madonna and even feminist academic Camille Paglia. Two weeks later, she was booed and jeered by the crowd at a Bob Dylan tribute gig at Madison Square Garden.
Nine years later, the Pope would have to acknowledge staggeringly wide-spread sexual abuse in the Church ranks, but by then the damage to O’Connor’s career was done. She would never again reach the peaks of pop stardom. But then again, she probably didn’t care. "Everyone wants a pop star, see?” she would write in her 2021 memoir Remembrances. “But I am a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame."
O’Connor would go on to have a solid career as a recording artist, releasing ten studio albums that included fascinating experiments with reggae (Throw Down Your Arms) and Irish folk-song (Sean-Nós Nua). She continued to speak her mind, campaigning against the Catholic Church, for a united Ireland, and for LGBTQ+ rights. In recent years, her life’s work found the critical reappraisal it deserves, especially with Kathryn Ferguson’s 2022 documentary Nothing Compares.
At her last public appearance, when receiving an award at the RTE Choice Music Prize this March, she dedicated her award to Ireland’s refugee community. “You’re very welcome in Ireland. Mashallah,” she said in her speech, an activist who believed in loving each other to the very end. “I love you very much and I wish you happiness. Thank you.”
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