Sinead O'Connor

[Deleted]

Jul 30, 2023 18:06:23 GMT -4 @fitz said:

This set me off again, this is a lovely letter in the Telegraph about Sinéad’s kindness to this young woman also worth a look in the replies.

Oh my god, like this story.

I'm old enough that I remember when she first came on the scene here in the USA ("Mandinka" remains one of my favorite songs ever), her rise the superstardom on these shores with "Nothing Compares 2 U" (a song with particular personal significance for me because it was basically the soundtrack of the earliest days of my relationship with my now-husband), her unapologetic and bold persona, and then the whole SNL thing. And with so many years that have passed since then, I don't know if I can properly convey the vitriol and hatred she got from that. She became seemingly overnight this target of pure unfettered contempt. (I think it's no small irony that the supposed counterculture SNL did nothing to support her and in fact joined with the collective in making fun of her afterwards.) I remember watching that episode of SNL at the time and I didn't quite understand the statement she was making - I thought perhaps she was speaking out against that pope in particular for some reason, not "getting" that she was making a statement (and what statement, specifically) about the church as an institution. I'm not Catholic so I didn't feel like I had a "right" to an opinion about whatever she was trying to say about the pope regardless. (In other words, I didn't get it. I get it now, of course.) Afterwards, as the media-stoked public anger faded, she was often (again, at least in the USA) portrayed as sort of a "what's that nutter up to NOW" sort of figure, getting attention only when something dramatic (and often unflattering) happened in her personal life.

The swell of mourning in the aftermath of her death is stunning. She touched many of us without us perhaps realizing it and taking her completely for granted. I realized recently that I'd never heard a voice like hers and likely never will again. (I was having lunch with my elderly MIL, who doesn't follow celebrity careers or gossip, but had heard on the news that Sinead O'Connor had died - she brought it up and said, "I always loved her voice".) She spoke truths that were, indeed, uncomfortable and inconvenient, but truths nevertheless even if many of us were unprepared or incapable of hearing them. Most of us didn't appreciate her enough and I can sense the regret.

[Ginger]

Jan 7, 2007 1:23:39 GMT -4 @foiegras said:

She became seemingly overnight this target of pure unfettered contempt. (I think it's no small irony that the supposed counterculture SNL did nothing to support her and in fact joined with the collective in making fun of her afterwards.) I remember watching that episode of SNL at the time and I didn't quite understand the statement she was making - I thought perhaps she was speaking out against that pope in particular for some reason, not "getting" that she was making a statement

People are forgetting now that at the time, NOBODY knew what she was protesting. It was not a coherent protest. Literally, the papers in the days following were saying, "Um, we think it's because she's pro-choice? Maybe?" I think Sinead wanted the message to be in the song and the symbolism, but that was an abstract message delivered to a very mainstream audience that wasn't going to get any of that. And an American audience did not have any idea of the Catholic culture in Ireland or what went on at the Magdalene laundries, especially not in 1992. And again, no hint from Sinead that it's what she was referring to anyway.

And when she had the chance in the following weeks to explain it, she was even less coherent. She went on the radio and said stuff about how the Catholic Church is really to blame for the Holocaust, not Hitler, who "wasn't a bad person" and was just the victim of child abuse. And just days after the actual incident, an interview in Rolling Stone was published in which she said a lot of controversial things. She called Mike Tyson's rape victim a "bitch" for suing him and "who cares of he raped her?" Mike Tyson was the one to feel sorry for because, again, she said he must have been the victim of child abuse. The timing of that really diluted the message of whatever it was she was trying to say on SNL.

At the time, apart from the one hit song, the mainstream public knew her as a controversy generating machine, and she wasn't always in the right. Context matters.

And I don't blame SNL for not taking her side. She didn't do it with their cooperation or approval. She intentionally hid from SNL that she was going to highjack the show and do this stunt. In dress rehearsal, she ripped up a photo of a child. The cardinal rule at SNL is not to go off-script during the live show. And it's not like she went off script with a joke, she went off-script with a very controversial act that legitimately offended a lot of people, including people who worked on the show. And the show got in trouble for it too. Of course they weren't happy with her after that.

The world had 30 years after this incident to understand what Sinead was about - passionate, opinionated, unconventional, badly wounded as a child, frequently erratic, contradictory, inconsistent, and struggling with mental illness. But it's 20/20 hindsight to act like everyone in 1992 should have known exactly what Sinead meant and embraced it wholeheartedly.

[tabby]

Jul 30, 2023 18:06:23 GMT -4 @fitz said:

This set me off again, this is a lovely letter in the Telegraph about Sinéad’s kindness to this young woman also worth a look in the replies.

Wow, it sure got dusty in here all of a sudden. What a lovely story, and for once, a comment section that's not a cesspit.

[technicolor]

Jul 31, 2023 9:08:10 GMT -4 Ginger said:

Jan 7, 2007 1:23:39 GMT -4 @foiegras said:

She became seemingly overnight this target of pure unfettered contempt. (I think it's no small irony that the supposed counterculture SNL did nothing to support her and in fact joined with the collective in making fun of her afterwards.) I remember watching that episode of SNL at the time and I didn't quite understand the statement she was making - I thought perhaps she was speaking out against that pope in particular for some reason, not "getting" that she was making a statement

People are forgetting now that at the time, NOBODY knew what she was protesting. It was not a coherent protest. Literally, the papers in the days following were saying, "Um, we think it's because she's pro-choice? Maybe?" I think Sinead wanted the message to be in the song and the symbolism, but that was an abstract message delivered to a very mainstream audience that wasn't going to get any of that. And an American audience did not have any idea of the Catholic culture in Ireland or what went on at the Magdalene laundries, especially not in 1992. And again, no hint from Sinead that it's what she was referring to anyway.

And when she had the chance in the following weeks to explain it, she was even less coherent. She went on the radio and said stuff about how the Catholic Church is really to blame for the Holocaust, not Hitler, who "wasn't a bad person" and was just the victim of child abuse. And just days after the actual incident, an interview in Rolling Stone was published in which she said a lot of controversial things. She called Mike Tyson's rape victim a "bitch" for suing him and "who cares of he raped her?" Mike Tyson was the one to feel sorry for because, again, she said he must have been the victim of child abuse. The timing of that really diluted the message of whatever it was she was trying to say on SNL.

At the time, apart from the one hit song, the mainstream public knew her as a controversy generating machine, and she wasn't always in the right. Context matters.

And I don't blame SNL for not taking her side. She didn't do it with their cooperation or approval. She intentionally hid from SNL that she was going to highjack the show and do this stunt. In dress rehearsal, she ripped up a photo of a child. The cardinal rule at SNL is not to go off-script during the live show. And it's not like she went off script with a joke, she went off-script with a very controversial act that legitimately offended a lot of people, including people who worked on the show. And the show got in trouble for it too. Of course they weren't happy with her after that.

The world had 30 years after this incident to understand what Sinead was about - passionate, opinionated, unconventional, badly wounded as a child, frequently erratic, contradictory, inconsistent, and struggling with mental illness. But it's 20/20 hindsight to act like everyone in 1992 should have known exactly what Sinead meant and embraced it wholeheartedly.

Thank you for expressing the complexities of O'Connor's history so well. I've been struggling about what and if to write something because I don't want to come across as callous.

However, I am so tired of the whole machinery that springs into action once a troubled famous woman dies in particular. It's always the same: Derided while they were alive, then pressed into a convenient martyr narrative once they've died and can't talk back and say or do something messy anymore. All of it is incredibly reductive and dehumanizing. Built up to make them easier for posthumous consumption. It's happened with Monroe, Winehouse, Houston and countless others. For once in his miserable life Morissey is pretty much on point about how this all functions.

O'Connor was very brave in taking on the Catholic church and many other issues, she also wasn't always coherent about what she wanted to say and sometimes also said wrong and hurtful things. She struggled all her life with mental health issues and her history of abuse, making her sometimes erratic and often unable to take care of her children. None of this made her evil and she certainly deserved compassion. Instead the media turned her into a villain and into a punchline. I've also noticed that many articles now minimize her conversion to Islam or that her biggest hit was written by Prince, whom she claimed had attacked her. (Prince: Another dead musician with a very, very messy, controversial history we still don't know how to talk about without falling into absolutes.) Because brand building is so much easier if you leave out all the mess.

I don't know what the answer is, but I think we keep doing it wrong. Another sad example is Britney Spears: She's been a victim of abuse, but at this point she's also been abusive towards her children and IMO wiping away one part of that story, no matter which part, doesn't help anyone and only perpetuates hurt. Nina Simone suffered tremendous discrimination and abuse all her life, her daugther claims that Nina abused her very badly as well. Both of these things can be true. Whitney Houston was failed by her family, exploited and suffered from her addictions, her and Bobby Brown were also unfit parents for Bobbi Kristina and contributed to their daughter's troubles and untimely death. Same goes for Kurt Cobain, to not only focus on tragic female celebrities: He was an addict in tremendous pain, he and Courtney also weren't good parents to Frances Bean.

What can also eventually happen with relentless deification is the backlash that's been coming John Lennon's way and that I also find distateful, just as turning him into a saint before that was terrible. He was a very flawed human being who made a lot of mistakes, admitted to plenty of them and seemed to try to do better. Never completely arrived there because...you know, brutally murdered. (David Bowie supposedly also being on Chapman's kill list and having to play on Broadway right after Lennon's murder with the seats ordered by Lennon, Yoko Ono and Chapman empty also really floored me when reading up on this. Talk about lifelong trauma.)

This is just rambling now, sorry. But I'm just so uncomfortable about how the discourse about this and many other things goes on in both the media and also in many online spaces. It seems to have gotten worse during the pandemic. All these absolutes are so dehumanizing. It all leads to policing each other and in the end to reducing each other to simple right/wrong categories. Instead of trying to have compassion while also talking with nuance about flaws and problems.

[Ginger]

Although it took time, I think it's beautiful that through the years, people came to understand and accept her for who she was, knowing that she was complicated, iconoclastic, unconventional, imperfect, frustrating, but good-hearted and well-meaning.

It's also worth mentioning that in 1992, she was 25 years old. She was so young! Think of what we would expect from a 25-year-old pop star now. Of course her opinions at the time were going to be passionate and not always perfectly expressed. A lot of what she said was right on and before their time, other things were not so great.

I just see a lot of the usual re-writing of history, acting like she was a prophet who delivered a perfect message in 1992 and people rejected it because people suck. No, it was way more complicated than that.

And we're also still in a place where celebrities are either all good or all bad with nothing in between, and the only way of getting past that is pretending that a lot of things that happened never happened.

[chiqui]

When Sinead first emerged onto the music scene, she was lumped in with punk rock because of her shaved head, Doc Martins, and dark, baggy clothing, so when the SNL thing happened, I just thought "Oh, it's another crazy punk stunt." I'm sure a lot of people did.

[cremetangerine82]

I give credit to ANY 25-year-old pop star who cares more about a political issue than most who worry about their choreography, chart performances, and makeup. At 10, I understood her gesture as a protest against the Roman Catholic Church, she changed a lyric of Bob Marley's "War" to reference child abuse, and she further explained the reason for the photo rip in subsequent interviews. My very Christian mother was on her side because of the many stories she had heard about the Catholic clergy committing child sexual abuse. My aunt smartly pointed out it was easier to be angry at the messenger than the message. I give her credit for what she did and I'm glad she, like so many abuse victims, needed to be heard.

[Ginger]

Nov 29, 2021 1:38:37 GMT -4 cremetangerine82 said:

and she further explained the reason for the photo rip in subsequent interviews.

I'm not a Sinead expert, but I think it was years before she really explained it. People at the time were generally pretty baffled as to what the song had to do with the pope.

Someone remarked that the actual photo was one that used to hang on her mother's wall. Her mother was abusive in many ways (sexually included) and Sinead felt that it was the Catholic Church's control of sexuality that had messed up her mother. When her mother died, Sinead took the photo off the wall and took it with her. That's a very poignant aspect to the story that we know in 2023, but not something anyone knew in 1992.

It certainly was nice that rock/pop stars cared about things in the 90s, and not just as marketing gimmicks. (But I feel like an old lady singing "Glory Days" when I say something about the 90s was superior.)

[cremetangerine82]

My point, Ginger, was that she did make a clear link by adding the words "child abuse" (not in the original song by Bob Marley) and the tearing of Pope John Paul II's photo on SNL. The Church itself didn't mention the child sexual abuse for years, so the aiming the arrows at Sinéad because she made an easier target.

[Ginger]

Jul 31, 2023 16:49:13 GMT -4 cremetangerine82 said:

My point, Ginger, was that she did make a clear link by adding the words "child abuse" (not in the original song by Bob Marley) and the tearing of Pope John Paul II's photo on SNL. The Church itself didn't mention the child sexual abuse for years, so the aiming the arrows at Sinéad because she made an easier target.

And people did not catch that. It's not a song most people know, and you have to know the song in order to catch that she changed a few words.

And once she ripped up the picture, that overshadowed what came before it. (Ironically, her original plan was to hold up a photo of a child and say "This is what we need to protect" and that would have been a pretty clear.)

I think you are incorrect if you are suggesting that there was widespread understanding at the time of what her message was.

I actually looked up for interest's sake in the Gale News archive what the papers were saying in the days following and like I said, they said they thought it was because Sinead was pro-choice and generally against Catholicism.