In any society, Sinead O'Conner would have been radical for a pop star. But in Ireland, she was revolutionary. Photo / Getty Images
In any society, Sinead O'Conner would have been radical for a pop star. But in Ireland, she was revolutionary. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion by Una Mullally
OPINION
On March 9, Sinead O’Connor stood onstage at the Vicar Street concert venue in Dublin. Her presence was greeted by a prolonged standing ovation. O’Connor was at the RTE Choice Music Prize, an evening celebrating the best Irish albums of the past year. A new award had been inventedfor the occasion: classic Irish album, and O’Connor was there to accept it for her 1990 record, I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got.
It was the day after my 40th birthday. Untethered by this life landmark, I felt strangely grounded by her presence: Sinéad is here, all is well in the world. Soaking in the noise of the audience cheering her on, she smiled, almost bashful, before dedicating the award to refugees in Ireland.
O’Connor had a tendency to show up at necessary moments. This time, her reappearance was a relief, because everyone in the crowd was worried about her. Her son, Shane, took his own life in 2022. He was 17. She was no stranger to articulating her personal struggles: the abuse she suffered as a child, the impact of a news media that sometimes hounded her, diagnoses of bipolar disorder and PTSD.
And now, here she was, onstage in Dublin, a strange sort of lighthouse, beaming again. “How is she?” I asked one of the stage crew. “Flying form,” came the answer.
O’Connor receiving the Classic Irish Album award at the RTE Choice Music Prize, in Dublin, in March. Photo / Getty Images
At the time, there was something of an O’Connor renaissance occurring. Her 2021 memoir, Rememberings, was critically lauded, and she posted the positive reviews excitedly on social media. The 2022 documentary Nothing Compares, directed by Kathryn Ferguson, correctly positioned her as an alternative moral compass in Ireland, driven by integrity and authenticity, not shame.
When I was child, Ireland felt like a phony place, yet I had no way to conceptualise its inauthenticity. I was raised Catholic, and made to navigate the weirdness of First Holy Communion, novenas and trips to the shrine at Knock. The idea of defying this was incomprehensible. The dominance of the church was simply a given.
I was 9 when television news bulletins framed O’Connor destroying a photograph of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live as blasphemous, missing the serious statement behind the act. As far as Irish society was concerned, he was a living saint. The incident rattled the country, and it also rattled me. You could do that?
There was no MTV in my house, but for some odd reason, my grandmother’s television set, on the other side of the country, in Galway, provided this magic portal. I would stay up late when visiting her, and O’Connor would drop in. Nothing Compares 2 U. Her open, searching gaze. The tear. You could do that, too? You could shave your head? Dye Public Enemy’s logo on the side of your head? Be an Irish woman wearing ripped denim on television? Go on an Irish chat show dressed as a priest? Come out as lesbian, and later declare you were “three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay”?
In any society at the time, this stuff was radical. But in Ireland, it was revolutionary.
O’Connor at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1990. Photo / Getty Images
And Ireland was in her songs. Dublin in a rainstorm was the setting for one of her finest, Troy. Her voice was pure and strong, and Anita Baker described it as “cavernous.” She traversed alt-rock and pop, reggae and traditional Irish music. She covered Prince, Nirvana and John Grant. On 8 Good Reasons (a title that referred to the eyes of her four children, she explained), she sang, “You know I love to make music, but my head got wrecked by the business.”
When I first interviewed O’Connor, in 2007, backstage at the Oxegen music festival, in Kildare, she seemed a little shaky, but utterly cool, friendly and fun. In 2014, I sat listening to her talk about her latest album, I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, as she chain-smoked in a Dublin recording studio, her face tattoos faded by laser removal treatment.
Although I only knew her from afar, the sense of connection she created, both through the music and what she stood for, was profound. Her loss has instigated a deep collective grief across Ireland. She was a symbol of hope as much as defiance, an artist and thinker who always stood on the horizon, urging others to catch up.
When I heard the news, I felt the gut-punch of loss. It was as though something elemental had departed the world, and some essential tributary had run dry within me.
My wife stood up from the couch, walked to the fireplace, and lit a candle, the traditional gesture of Irish grief and remembrance. The national broadcaster’s main radio station played song after song. We remembered that night in March, when the roar and applause of the audience in Dublin seemed to say: thank you, we love you, you were right.
