RIP Sinead O'Connor

  The first time I saw Sinead O'Connor was her performance of "Mandinka" on the 1989 Grammys.  It was just her onstage singing to a backing track.  But it was edgy, different regardless of the lack of theatrics.  These were the Grammys, who at the time were not known for alternative credentials.  "Mandinka" is great, but it was O'Connor herself that stood out with her (mostly) bald head cutting a striking figure.  And a powerful voice to match.

  A year later would come her breakthrough.  She started the decade with both a #1 single, the Prince cover "Nothing Compares 2 U" and album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got.  But things start to turn sour.  A National Anthem controversy in the Summer of '90 starts things off.  But it's 1992 where things get derailed.  An SNL performance in early October 1992 would become her most infamous performance, as she tore up the Pope's photo after singing Bob Marley's "War".  Two weeks later she's booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan 30th anniversary concert while singing "War".  After that her career as a best-selling artist was over. Whether you agreed with what she did or not is besides the point.  The misogyny leveled at her was disgusting.  In the end she was right about the things she was protesting.  But in 1992 no one wanted to hear the truth from a woman labeled "difficult" and "angry". 

  The last decades of her life were scarred with mental health issues. And she never could shake off the "always angry" stigma that followed her since SNL. But she didn't stop recording after 1992.  I count 8 albums of mild to good and sometimes very, very good albums.  In 2022 an excellent, much needed documentary, Nothing Compares, gives her career the redemption it had been missing.

  The documentary was the closest Sinead O'Connor came to receiving any kind of career accolade.  She deserves to be celebrated for her brave, defiant stances on the topics she cared about.  But also as a superb recording artist who didn't bow down to anyone's expectations of what they wanted from her music.  She was an original, a pioneer.