Sinead O'Connor: C/D?

The first album and that album had their share of great tracks, I've always loved the song Black Boys on Mopeds. She really fell off after that. I have no idea what she's about now; isn't she a priest or something?

"Nothing Compares To You" (2 U?) was great though. I seem to remember giving it some love in the #1s poll.

Odd, that she went off to be a priest after tearing up the picture of the pope, and everything she said about Catholicism. I suppose its a love/hate relationship, on both sides. I've seen people be more consistent with their political stance, but that's her prerogative.

I would say that Chaka Khan's take on "I Feel For You" is also a definitive version.

Several tracks on I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got are classics. Undeniably. (Although I can do without her Prince cover.)

Her output since then hasn't moved me much.

However, I haven't heard Sean-Nós Nua or She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty. Has anyone else? Opinions?

So many great songs: "The Emperor's New Clothes" (one of the best fade-outs ever), "Mandinka," "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance," "Troy," "Jerusalem."

also search the track she did with Bomb The Bass and Benjamin Zephaniah, "Empire", which is terrifically dark. And "The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance" soundtracking the last chapter of Bret Easton Ellis's Glamorama.

she should have done more covers: she was a truly stunning interpretative artist, "Nothing Compares 2 U" is an obvious example but she also did gorgeous versions of "Sacrifice", "All Apologies" and "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" as well. (xpost!)

I could have lived the rest of my life happily not knowing that.

(I didn't actually know "Jackie" was an album opener, I only have the best of CD and Universal Mother; should I investigate the earlier albums?)

Hahaha. (Keep in mind I lurv Placebo.) It's on the covers bonus disc that came with Sleeping With Ghosts.

should I investigate the earlier albums?

Um, yes? Very much so?

and Jed is OTM on the don't cry for me argentina..some how lighthearted and cutting at the same time...I think she got a bit of a raw deal for being so forceful with her politics, to the point of amost being cheap. I recall a huge scandal when she played Saratoga one summer when I was in jr. high (i think) and refusing to have the national anthem played before the show...that seemed, even then, a bit childish, but the young fresh foolish me got chills when she ripped up the pope.

(Otherwise, I'm with everyone else who rates her first two as unassailable Classics).

That "Gospel Oak" EP, short though it may be, shows that she remains an amazing songwriter. Her last two albums proper, though - "Universal Mother" and "Faith and Courage" - seem too set on the by then impossible notion that she might get played on the radio, and therefore she makes the attendant compromises. To be honest, I'm worried Kate Bush may fall prey to the same delusion.

Frankly, I wish Sinead realized (assuming she doesn't) that she could maintain her ideals on the folk/cult circuit, a la Marianne Faithful or someone like that, rather than aim for pop appeal.

(xpost)

I loved that EP she put out in '97 or so.

Her version of "The Butcher's Boy" in the film of the same name is pretty special.

"I Am Stretched On Your Grave" was teh jammm at the time. Haven't heard it in years.

Massive Attack -- Special Cases (Radio Edit)
Asian Dub Foundation Featuring Sinéad O'Connor -- 1000 Mirrors
Bomb The Bass Featuring Sinéad O'Connor & Benjamin Zephaniah -- Empire
Ghostland -- Guide Me God
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart Featuring Sinéad O'Connor -- Visions Of You
Afro Celt Sound System -- Release (Album Edit)
Sinéad O'Connor With The Blockheads -- Wake Up And Make Love With Me
The The -- Kingdom Of Rain (Album Version)
U2 & Sinéad O'Connor -- I’m Not Your Baby
Conjure One Featuring Sinéad O'Connor -- Tears From The Moon (Album Version)
Peter Gabriel & Sinéad O'Connor -- Blood Of Eden (Radio Edit)
Moby Featuring Sinéad O'Connor -- Harbour
Aslan -- Up In Arms
Damien Dempsey Featuring Sinéad O'Connor -- It’s All Good
The Edge & Sinéad O'Connor -- Heroine (Theme From “Captive”)
The Colourfield Featuring Sinéad O'Connor -- Monkey In Winter
Sinéad O'Connor & Terry Hall -- All Kinds Of Everything

i happened to catch this one today on an internet radio station i listen to at work -- it was as stunning now as it was 15 years ago (when i first heard it). and i'm enough of a softie to get still choked up when i hear "nothing compares 2 u" (much less see that video).

i guess i should root around my cds to see if i stil have i do not want what i haven't got.

Shinehead O'Connor by miles and miles.

Bjork can mince around all she likes and be mad elfin, but Sinead is a very angry Irish woman chock full of raw intensity. [...] Shinehead is so badass that she could rock her own comic book.

-- Mike Taylor

(sadly I still haven't investigated a great deal of Sinead's music... but as a human being I respect her enormously).

I wonder what it would sound like if she covered Kate Bush, like Night of the Swallow, or Jig of Life.

good lord 'fire on babylon' is all kinds of fierce.

FIIYYYYRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEE

also, that bassline!

Great song, great entire album I reckon! The ballads kill me - esp. "John I Love You" and "A Perfect Indian".

the most awful song on massive attack's "100th window": "a prayer for england". DESTROY!

Sinead, an acoustic guitar, Dutch festival crowd, 1988 -- "Troy":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeIHZvZTJTg

I'm telling ya, people need to see this clip.

I'm glad for her that she's found a niche recording these genre experiments, but I really do miss her as gadfly.

It's stuff like "Troy" that got us interested in the later genre experiments in the first place.

I KILLED A DRAGON FOR YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND

i love this song for reals

That's a ferocious performance. Her neck muscles when she sings "I'd kill a dragon for you" alone make this worth watching.

WOW.

For the first time I wondered what this song is about specifically (obv it's pretty clear what it's about generally). Is Sinead playing a woman who's in a relationship with a married (or at any rate attached) guy? That seems to be the only explanation that makes all the different bits scan consistently.

Yeah, that clip is unreal. The Troy performance on the bonus disc of the Do Not Want reissue is possibly even more intense.

That line, "You should have left the light on," is so brilliant. That's exactly the kind of thing someone might say when they're overcome with anger and not thinking very clearly. If the light had been on, none of this would have happened. That's how the mind works.

She performed it last year for first time in almost 20 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyqvQVeVK9A

x-post Totally. Except for the first time I've thought maybe the song is kinda rational throughout. She's been having an affair with him, he said he was gonna leave his wife but now he's changed his mind, she's furious that he ever encouraged her to the point that now she's totally lost in love/hate.

love that pinkpop clip. she did it the same way as a final encore when i saw her in '91. totally riveting.

I've never thought of the song as being about an affair with a married man specifically. He's obviously an emotionally unavailable asshole, but there could be any number of reasons for that.

The soul-killing line for me is "but I knew you wanted me to be there" -- so, despite all her yelling and screaming and white-hot anger, she's still trying to convince herself that everything is really OK.

This helps:

WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032502363.html?hpid=topnews

that was an excellent read; she is an incredibly evocative writer

Very heavy.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/2011/08/sinead_split_a_p.jpg

45 year old woman in not-looking-like-when-she-was-20 shocker

― 69, Tuesday, July 12, 2011 5:52 PM (4 weeks ago) Bookmark

tbf it's nothing to do with age, but more that she looks radically different from the image of her that many of us carry around in our minds. i know that i wouldn't have been able to identify her in the absence of clues

tbf 45 yo Sinead looks more like she's 13

Wait... the woman in black is Sinead?!

y

A minute after that photo was taken she adjusted the mike down and started singing out of her bellybutton.

jeezo

The singer has crafted a rather thorough list of musts ("Must be blind enough to think I'm gorgeous") and must nots ("Must not be named Brian or Nigel").

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the good times don't stop at the produce section.

"Let me now take time to make VERY clear that yes I 'do anal' and in fact I would be deeply unhappy if 'doing anal' wasn't on the menu, amongst everything else$$ So if u don't like 'the difficult brown'.. Don't apply..."

Also, women "will also be very much considered."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/30/sinead_n_941808.html

"Difficult brown?"

that's not how you seduce a man!

She is apparently touring soon!!! Feb 23-24 at Highline Ballroom. And I am totally hooked on "Fire on Babylon" at the moment; I cannot wait to go to this show

Maybe you'll marry her for 5 minutes!

maybe you can sell her some weed!

true, then she won't have to resort to crack

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/sinead-oconnor-pleads-for-psychiatric-help-on-twitter--suicide-attempt_n_1201626.html

Oh jeez, Sinead. I hope she's OK and also that her show in NYC in a month isn't cancelled

Yeah, it's not really funny, I hope she gets help soon!

I am always rooting for this woman

I feel for her, she seems really ill.

Great NYT profile/interview here, discussing the above and more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/arts/music/sinead-oconnors-how-about-i-be-me-and-you-be-you.html

this album seems alright, half of one song in

I'm so ready to want a good Sinead album (the last one I bought was the forgettable one in 2000). "Reason With Me" gives me reason to hope.

Her most underrated record is that "Gospel Oak" EP. I think this is one of the most beautiful songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdeMkywlS54

My wife used to sing it to our kids.

This is all time, my friends:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-wwxSIgZH0

:-/

With enormous regret I must announce that I have to cancel all touring for the year as am very unwell due to bi polar disorder.

As you all know I had a very serious breakdown between December and March and I had been advised by my doctor not to go on tour but didn't want to 'fail' or let anyone down as the tour was already booked to coincide with album release. So very stupidly I ignored his advice to my great detriment, attempting to be stronger than I actually am.

I apologise sincerely for any difficulties this may cause.

There's all sorts of weird timing at work here. She's quiet for a while, semi-retired. Then she suddenly goes public via social media. Then there's the crazy wedding and breakdown and possible suicide attempt (from an artist who has had breakdowns and suicide attempts in the past). Then the new album comes out and gets good reviews. Then she schedules a tour - she was great when I saw her a few years ago - and at least here the venues get pumped up from smaller spaces to bigger clubs. And then she cancels. I can only imagine the pressure she is under to fill coffers or whatever, because even I could have told her taking some time off would be a wise idea.

She peaked creatively with "Troy" from the first album, y/n?

no

she peaked with that sound

and with the use of Yeatsian rhetoric

nah. Troy is grebt and easily makes any POV but IDNWWIHNG is pretty freakin strong start to finish.

Her first album is my favourite but she does too many different things too brilliantly on that album for me to label any one of them her "peak".

I would definitely agree that she peaked artistically with her first album, which I basically consider to be immaculate. Not sure I would agree with "creatively". All of her subsequent albums have at least one song on it I don't get at all.

Yeah I love her first album SO much, one of my all time favorite albums no question. But the followup has a lot of great moments in it and I kind of feel like a song like Emperor's New Clothes, for example is the culmination of the sound she explored in Mandinka. There's a lot of things she does on that first album that she explores in new ways on the second. The first works better because of the rawness, but her refinement is interesting and appealing to me also

I really am full of shit though lol

What I meant to say: "Troy" was the height of using her voice in an inchoate manner in deliberately constricted atmospheres. O'Connor is too restless to have peaks. I loved last spring's record.

xpost no I think that's spot on.

Universal Mother is underrated in my lonely opinion.

first record: "Let me try a bit of everything." Second album: "Let me try rock-inflected chamber music."

I really dug Faith And Courage -- No Man's Woman has stayed with me for a long time.

I think "Fire On Babylon" might be her best track.

I listened to "No Man's Woman" and "Jealous" a lot last February; I think my antipathy to Dave Stewart tainted my opinions in 2000.

unrelated: I love in Emperor's New Clothes the way she sings 'and how a *praaaaagnancy* can change you' :)

I love the lyrics to "Emperor's New Clothes" but I am not particularly into the melody or the arrangement, which is the exact opposite reaction I usually have to music

xpost Tim I'm not sold on best but Steve otm "fire on babylon" is, on certain days, absolutely crushing.

ugh phone posting. Tim "agreed on underrated and I'm not sold..." etc

I like how in the first verse she sings the high notes w falsetto but then after that she just fucking waaaaails

The song sounds so fucking huge and explosive and the dubby reggae vibe is perfect. Also, in the live versions on YouTube the harmonies during the chorus are p killer

Those unexpected drum fills over the "Emperor" outro -- after a steady chug-chug -- still make me swoon after all these years.

yeah it's killer

speaking of chug, her electric rhythm strums all over "Jump in the River."

xps Oh yeah that too, it's like a minute long!! What an awesome outro!! It reminds me of "Pervesion" by Stereolab.

Have any of y'all heard the "Main Mix" that Hank Shocklee/The Bomb Squad did? It rivals the orig.

xpost stevie otm x2 fire, brimstone, both barrels, etc. for righteous fury, i kinda pair it with "a prayer for england"

alfred otm x2 as well on possibly my two fave trax from that record tho in fairness it's easy to forget due to overplay just how astonishing "nothing compares 2 u" really was when you heard it for the first time.

this revive has made me happy today

IT'S ALL BEEN A GORGEOUS MISTAKE

nothing compares still makes me teary - every time I hear it it's like the first time for me, her voice is just so beautiful it kills me

p.s. here is a link to that v hard to track down Bomb Squad remix of "Emperor's New Clothes"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09Bm9g6ceKE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88wL8oRf45U

There's an old article on <a href="http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2002/10/argentina1/";>Freaky Trigger</a> where Tom reviews a bunch of covers of Don't Cry For Me Argentina and nails why hers is the best.

http://www.irishmirror.ie/showbiz/irish-showbiz/sinead-oconnor-calls-kim-kardashian-6066869

Ha! She's always great when she kicks off!

anyone take a gander at her facebook meltdown? ugly stuff...yet reading back over it all in detail.... she sounds like she has some very legitimate concerns about her son. what ugly family business.

yeah harrowing stuff. i hope she get help. constant dram with sinead unfortunately.

drama

I feel like everyone's always been cruel to her, especially in the american media. Not an earth shattering revelation I know, just happened to be listening to Troy today

The peak of Sinead's fame and my SNL fandom both occurred at the same time, but even though I was a kid, I still got that the show (taking a cue from the larger media, of course) was especially brutal to her, both before and after the infamous pope thing. It made me all the more determined to root for her, and I still do.

She was calling attention to child sexual abuse over a decade before anyone else cared! That's what that whole thing was about! Fuck america seriously

Everyone thought it was just some sort of "edgy" stunt because they're morons

Perfectly irrelevant time warp for today, granted

I honestly remember Andrew Dice Clay getting more sensitive treatment from the media at the time.

I dont remember directly bc i was like four, but i've always known about that whole saga. Wikipedia says that madonna trashed her at the time

I remember thinking it was kinda cool but not thinking much of it & them finding out that american media was all flipped out about it was weird, like omg youys really

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhUzMGQLid4

Wow...that is hard to watch.

I see she's back on FB, having erased her plaintive frightening posts about being committed last year; and she also appears to be on tour? there's a rather great version of her doing Life on Mars from the other day. She looks fucking tough now, like, I would not fuck with this lady, she might put a bottle through my face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkI6lzreh4w

oh that's a shitty version. Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNXYFOPRuQ0

^goosebumps^

Yeah, that was from a Bowie tribute concert here.

I think she's massively been treated like shit, and then every few years she does something great and people are all, huh, maybe we shouldn't have treated her like shit. I even liked her Sly & Robbie album.

goddamn that was so good

she's a total classic. i still love the incredible ballsy pope photo shred move and still hate how madonna kinda mocked it shortly thereafter.

Her reggae covers album is my go-to Christmas record.

Wish it included her Asian Dub Foundation jam, because this is so good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUVErnrbVEc
Awesome vocal, could imagine it sung by Kirsty MacColl.

pretty sure troy is one of my favorite songs

gotta be one of the most dramatic performances ever.

Was sinead the wellspring of the "growly vowel" phenomenon that has been a favourite affectation of a certain kind of female singer from the 90s til now?

more or less yeah

Wait was that Reggae album all Burning Spear covers?

reported missing outside of Chicago

Police in a suburb of Chicago are searching for Irish singer Sinead O'Connor who has been reported missing for more than a day.
Wilmette Police "are seeking to check the well-being" of the 49-year-old, they said in a brief press release.
Police were called after Ms O'Connor "left the Wilmette area" for a bicycle ride at 0600 local time on Sunday, and had not returned after more than a day.
No more information is currently available, police say.

Arsenio got her

She posted on FB two days ago that she was heading to North Carolina to protest

i see she's deleted that though

That's a long way to cycle.

Have it on pretty good authority she's been found safe.

Yeah, despite the URL this is good news.

http://wgntv.com/2016/05/16/sinead-oconnor-reported-missing-in-chicagos-northern-suburbs/

Listening to the Bowie tribute above is amazing, but watching it is a really strange effect - she's an old slightly dangerous looking granny on the mic, and then she'll turn and the profile + the lighting (+ the fact that it's generally when she's really going for the note) - she's reborn in her own skin, it's like Troy was yesterday.

Which isn't to say that she's best when she's harking back to the flush of youth - far from it, she's one of the artist where surviving would be its own worth, but she's done so much more than survive.

glad to hear she's safe. one of my favorite singers.

agreed. so wish I didn't have to click with dread every time this thread gets bumped.

I did give Lion and the Cobra a heavy listen after hearing about her disappearance. Like, okay, this might be the last time I get to hear this all without the thoughts of memorial and sorrow. But the next thing I did was google up DJP's Paul Mooney post.

Story is so tragic that even finding her has apparently not resulted in a happy ending (see: her most recent Facebook rant).

Top tip: don't see.

I hate to be all "won't someone think of the children" but any time I see Sinead news I think about how weird it must be to have her for a mother

the current situation seems weird. like, her 28 year old son is refusing to remove her 12 year old son from foster care and take him into custody or something. (the state won't allow her to take custody, it seems.) i would probably be mad at him too.

the thing with sinead is that she spoke up against child sexual abuse in the catholic church before anyone else in a similarly visible position did so. she took flak from basically everyone, who chalked it up to her being an "irrational" "crazy" woman.

i still think of her as an essentially principled, brave person who now seems to suffer from some kind of tragic mental illness which i don't know the details of.

never heard this before

For Sinead O'Connor, Love Willie - Don't Give Up - https://t.co/xbFXnQsH3i via @YouTube

— Willie Nelson (@WillieNelson) August 16, 2017

After that video she put up last week, this thread popping up made me think "oh no" - glad to be listening to that instead, her voice works perfectly.

^same, my heart in my mouth for a second.

New song, streaming exclusively on The Irish Sun.

https://heavenlyrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/trouble-of-the-world-2

There was a weird thread in my dreams last night where I kept reciting lyrics from I do not want what I haven't got, then a stretch where I listened to the album "in full" (in dream time). So I had to play it today. Definitely the album with the highest percentage of songs that make me burst into tears, though I can never predict which moments will do it.

amazing new interview

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/arts/music/sinead-oconnor-rememberings.html

also, very afraid to read old posts in any sinead related threads tbh

Later, when “Nothing Compares 2 U” made her a star, O’Connor said the song’s writer, Prince, terrorized her. She had pledged to reveal the details “when I’m an old lady and I write my book,” and now she has: She writes that Prince summoned her to his macabre Hollywood mansion, chastised her for swearing in interviews, harangued his butler to serve her soup though she repeatedly refused it, and sweetly suggested a pillow fight, only to thump her with something hard he’d slipped into his pillowcase. When she escaped on foot in the middle of the night, she writes, he stalked her with his car, leapt out and chased her around the highway.

i love her so much <3

harangued his butler to serve her soup though she repeatedly refused it

The mental image of this alone is incredible...

reminds me of the Stevie Nicks story about Prince visiting her while sick, fluffing pillows and stuff until she demanded cough medicine. "I'm not here to get you hooked on another drug!" he yelled and walked out.

yikes

suddenly doesn't seem as strange

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIIAQME1Uhg

the photo of the pope being her Mother’s is a detail i never knew & it makes me love her more

also shaving her head when the exec tells her to dress more pretty is VERY much my energy and maybe my entire reason for her being my ride or die for 30+ years

yeah the key part of the prince stuff was this imo

Prince is the type of artist who is hailed as crazy-in-a-good-way, as in, “You’ve got to be crazy to be a musician,” O’Connor said, “but there’s a difference between being crazy and being a violent abuser of women.” Still, the fact that her best-known song was written by this person does not faze her at all. “As far as I’m concerned,” she said, “it’s my song.”

Sinead otm

she's just such a beautiful person imo sometimes it's just overwhelming

a queen.

I'm surprised that I haven't said so before itt, but I realised a while back that I'm going to get into A LOT of fights on the internet when she goes.

i will have your back

Sinead is in the comments section of that NYTimes article, chatting away. All her comments are NYT Picks so they are easy to find.

Her first two albums are among my most cherished, just bottomless in their subtleties.

otm

"IT IS NO MEASURE OF HEALTH TO BE WELL ADJUSTED TO A PROFOUNDLY SICK SOCIETY"

this is hard to argue with

frankly a far better take on mental health than just about all the "awareness" raising stuff that's everywhere these days has to offer

Her first two albums are among my most cherished, just bottomless in their subtleties.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, May 19, 2021 10:24 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

otm

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, May 19, 2021 11:46 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

otm. And off the top of my head, I can't think of a better album/career opener than "Jackie."

I just recently dug up I'm Not Bossy (I'm the Boss), after ignoring or maybe not even being aware of it when it came out, and it's good! Not great, but a totally respectable aging-legend album with some legit bangers. Love her.

Agreed. How About I Be Me (and You Be You)? also offers pleasures.

I noted at the time that the multi-tracking of her vocals on I'm Not Bossy was an attempt to mitigate how raspier her vice has become.

lol her voice

I really like this reworking of an older tune (I like the original too):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxH16hEYuuc

this made me go back and listen to Universal Mother last night, which I'd purchased when it was released but otherwise remembered nothing about other than being disappointed at the time (though I did see her live after it came out, the only time I ever saw her). Not sure why, it's a pretty strong album. Not as good as the first two but what is?

"Fire in Babylon" though

jesus christ i had forgotten how devastating most of “i do not want what i haven’t got” is.

i’ve said this before now
you said i was childish and you’ll say it now

not really a fan of those last two albums, she sounds good on them but the songs themselves are just not up to snuff. I like the recent single though.

giving Faith and Courage a first listen ever today

"No Man's Woman" is a jam.

Too much Dave Stewart though

jesus christ i had forgotten how devastating most of “i do not want what i haven’t got” is.
I love, love, LOVE that album. I know it got a lot of attention when it was released - a multiplatinum, Grammy-winning seller that placed a strong second in Pazz & Jop - but it didn't feel like that many people were still listening to it a decade or two later. I think I was introduced to it through Greg Kot - he loved that album, comparing it in some respects to John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band. He never had a reason to write about it specifically, he'd just hold it up as a masterpiece whenever he was doing some kind of overview or look back at the '90s for the Tribune. I already knew "Nothing Compares 2 U" but that whole album is amazing - just raw, brave and exposed.

giving Faith and Courage a first listen ever today

"No Man's Woman" is a jam.

I'll have to find it again, but I wasn't happy with the first "best of" they made so I burned my own. The first two albums may be her best, but there's great stuff on pretty much everything up to and including Faith and Courage. (Like Alfred mentioned "No Man's Woman," and "Jealous" and "Daddy I'm Fine" are probably my other two favorites.)

To realize she's ending a major second album with TWO acoustic ballads and an a cappella wonder stroke, my god.

It really shows how incredible her singing and her voice was at that time - it's very tasteful in terms of phrasing, but it never feels too little or restrained because that voice just carries so much in it.

Forgot to mention, if you can, check out her live performances from 1990. I didn't realize how good she was on-stage until I saw a re-run of her first appearance on SNL from September 1990. She doesn't do "Nothing Compares 2 U," she does two other songs from I Do Not Want.... Both are great, especially the second number ("The Last Day of Our Acquaintance") which is a cappella for a large part of it until she hits those chords on her acoustic guitar really hard for the last verse.

Capitol later reissued her first two live videos on a single 95 minute DVD in 2003, newly remastered. The first video (The Value of Ignorance) was from June 3, 1988, and the second (The Year of The Horse) was edited from two shows in late October 1990. If you have a player, it's worth tracking down, but there's both NTSC and PAL versions out there so make sure your player can handle the right one.

You can find VHS rips and probably DVD rips on YouTube if you want to go that route.

I saw her in '90, she was terrific. "Troy" was shattering.

man do I love her guitar on "Jump in the River."

another great interview around the book. I'm deeply disillusioned about Prince's treatment of her. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/may/29/sinead-oconnor-ill-always-be-a-bit-crazy-but-thats-ok-rememberings

She just announced her retirement from recording & touring: https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/9583210/sinead-oconnor-retirement

We are coming up to the 20th anniversary of her first retirement.

🎵 This is the anniversary of my first retirement 🎶

I'm excited to read her autobiography!

me too

another great interview around the book. I'm deeply disillusioned about Prince's treatment of her

Prince's music means the world to me, but the guy could be a complete ass so I wasn't that surprised when I first heard this years ago. I don't think Prince ever responded to it, but I'm guessing he was insanely jealous that she took his song to #1 while his attempt (albeit through the Family) flopped years before when his sales were at their peak.

His ego was ridiculous. After he died, he chewed out someone who was leaving him to work for George Michael. She did it partly because working for him was stressful, but he apparently said, "Who's George Michael? He ain't shit (compared to me)!" And his perfectionism was abusive. One of his horn players in the NPG recalled the pressure he put on him to play a complex solo perfectly, to the point where he would put a prop gun to his head on-stage as intimidation (it didn't sound like it played like a joke, that's for sure). And there are probably countless more stories like that.

After he died, he chewed out someone who was leaving him to work for George Michael.

I guess there is an afterlife.

an ex colleague worked for Prince for a long time ago like.... he was not a nice person

If your life consists of studio time pockmarked with occasional TV binges, softball games, and fucking, how can you be nice, right?

The best story I heard (here?) was Prince tasking his guitar tech to waterproof an amp so that he could play underwater, at the bottom of a pool. The tech was of course doubtful, but spent a ton of time perfecting a rig that would actually work underwater. When he finally got back to Prince, Prince had forgotten all about it. But given it was Prince, I would totally believe he hadn't forgotten about it and was fucking with his tech the whole time. What's always been surprising about the Sinead story is the accusation of physical violence, which as far as I can tell is an outlier in the Prince dossier.

I mean he drove my friend into bankruptcy by not paying him for video production (he did all his video stuff for a while including the video for Seven) and then suing him to bury him in legal fees to avoid paying (after he demanded 24/7/365 servitude for a number of years)

but sure just part of being the great man

I hope that's not what you think I meant!

no sorry! sorry I just get angry remembering the whole thing

A guy with Prince's insane productivity is like a person who goes without sleep: they're not normal. Now add the bowing and scraping of minders and sycophants.

Only a matter of time before someone publishes a major article on Prince's shittiness and the public attitude to the guy shifts in a big way.

Can I just say here that Melody Maker's treatment of Sinead back in the 80s/90s was shameful, exploitative and abusive to quite a large degree.

Can I just say here that Melody Maker's the press' treatment of Sinead back in the 80s/90s was shameful, exploitative and abusive to quite a large degree.

Yeah I'm just remembering MM as that's what I read, dunno if the NME poked "harmless" fun in her direction to the same degree. Did the mainstream press (UK) even acknowledge popular music at that point?

https://princetext.tripod.com/n_1995.html

here's an article about how he would constantly fuck contractors over, my friend is the video production guy who was owed 400k (for the gett off video iirc)

https://princetext.tripod.com/n_1995.html

Did the mainstream press (UK) even acknowledge popular music at that point?

It was the 1980s/90s not the 1880s/90s.

This whole thread and no one has mentioned her glorious take on "She Moved Through The Fair" from the Michael Collins soundtrack. That version gives me goosebumps...

I picked up some of her later albums this weekend at Half Price Books, I don't know much past Am I Not Your Girl? except the various collabs she did with other artists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR9v3jWh-YM

This one is evergreen for me

After he died, he chewed out someone who was leaving him to work for George Michael.

I guess there is an afterlife.

Agh, early morning, pre-coffee slip - I meant after Prince died, it came out that etc etc

lol I know

This whole thread and no one has mentioned her glorious take on "She Moved Through The Fair" from the Michael Collins soundtrack. That version gives me goosebumps...

https://princetext.tripod.com/n_1995.html

here's an article about how he would constantly fuck contractors over, my friend is the video production guy who was owed 400k

fyi:

https://i.imgur.com/aSqAsGM.jpg

We are coming up to the 20th anniversary of her first retirement.

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, June 7, 2021 6:14 PM (two days ago)

Unretired:

Good news. Fuck retiring. I retract. Am not retiring. I was temporarily allowing pigs in lipstick to fuck my head up... here's my statement..... in the form of these three photos. It's 'colourful' but that's me : ) #LetOConnorBeOConnor pic.twitter.com/wKoEKFANPk

— Sinead O'Connor (Shuhada Sadaqat) (@MagdaDavitt77) June 7, 2021

God damn <3

Wow.

By the way, non-UK ILXors won't be aware of the, er, interesting family history of Emma Barnett (presenter of Women's Hour) who Sinead singles out for particular opprobrium. Tittle tattle, for sure, but fascinating:

During Barnett's teenage years, her father ran brothels in the Greater Manchester area. The family home had been used for publicity shoots of some of the women and the recording of sex films. Previously convicted of "living off immoral earnings" and handed a suspended sentence,[7] in 2008 Barnett's father was sentenced to imprisonment for keeping brothels and controlling the prostitution of a trafficked woman; her mother received a suspended sentence for money laundering related to income from the brothels.[8][9][10] Barnett attended Manchester High School for Girls, an independent school.

"the dude abides" haha. love her.

hazards of listening to Sinead albums in late pregnancy: came completely unglued listening to “Black Boys on Mopeds,” suddenly sobbing on the drive to work. What a great song.

REMEMBERRRRRR what I TOLD YOU.

“You said I was childish, and you’ll say it now” is a sadly timeless line.

i love that album!

i'm pretty much banned from listening to sinead o connor in the flat because of some petty feud my bf has personally with her dating back to 80s dublin which i m sure nobody remembers but him

if she was of the world he would love her

anyway my favourite sinead is three babies and she is fn otm about that interview and emma barnett who is basically horrible

“Three Babies” also brought a tear to my eye on my commute this morning.

I listen to Lion and the Cobra a lot more frequently lately; I forgot how good I Do Not Want is

Has any American #1 album ever had a B-side that gets steadily quieter but intenser?

the title track is a cappella for god's sake

“Three Babies” also brought a tear to my eye on my commute this morning.

I listen to Lion and the Cobra a lot more frequently lately; I forgot how good I Do Not Want is

― horseshoe, Thursday, 10 June 2021 19:18 (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglin

i do not want is pretty much a recent discovery, i've always loved the lion and the cobra. Mandinka! Troy!

I think all the time about the bit in jackie where she sings 'you're all wrong i said and they stared at the sand' like i fucking bet they did!

her statement about coming out of retirement made me think of the Tina Turner documentary on HBO and how she couldn’t escape relentless questioning about Ike after she told the story of his abuse. (Obvs Turner has a v different way of engaging with the world.)

Sinead is always being portrayed as a madwoman but I feel like time has vindicated her on most scores. A Cassandra.

She is on some real terrifying oracular shit throughout Lion and the Cobra

oh yeah, definitely its sortof infuriating how vindicated she is but how little that seems to affect the way she continues to be treated

what's the perception/treatment of her in Ireland these days?

i think the same as elsewhere, somewhat affectionate but dismissive. she is funny, articulate, but ultimately tragic, fallen and not to be taken too seriously. the video i posted above is a few years old but i think a great example of how she's dismissed even as/especially because she punctures the fatuous platforms that infuriatingly she continues to engage with

I think there's definitely if not a generation then a sub-generational grouping, overwhelmingly women, to who she's incredibly important and emblematic both for what she's done and what's been done to her.

listened to universal mother for the first time today. that's a fuckin great record

"Fire on Babylon"!

really nightmarish michel gondry video for that song too

absolute banger

She took my breath away w/this performance when I saw it at the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ilPU7Pw9os

I wish I was able to see her with Sly & Robbie. I love that not only did she record with them but she shelled out to take them on tour, too.

Some terrible news:

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/sinead-oconnors-17-year-old-son-shane-dies-apparent-suicide-going-miss-rcna11465

awful news, poor Sinead

incredibly sad

I’m going to take private time now to grieve my son. When I am ready I will be telling exactly how the Irish State in the ignorant, evil, self-serving, lying forms of Tusla and the HSE enabled and facilitated his death. Magdalene Ireland never went away. Ask the youth.

yeah this is horrible.

she's been through so much

Oh that's so sad

.

Sounds like she's really not in a great place right now, hoping she is getting some help and comes through.

I wish I was able to see her with Sly & Robbie.

She was backed by Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce on her first North American tour. My jaw dropped when I recognized them on stage.

I cannot imagine anything worse, on a personal level, than losing a child.

Absolutely, it's unimaginable.

I have just read about her having a hard time dealing with her sons death. I hope she gets the help she needs.

In the YouTube comments for “Black Boys on Mopeds”:

I bought this cassette when I was in the Navy, during The Gulf War. After boot camp and A school. I was in Saudi Arabia and then Spain. In Spain I would listen to it in my shop. It ended up being confiscated due to the song, Black Boys on Mopeds. They sat me down and made me listen to it. "They" are the Commanding Officer on down". I was enlisted and 19. I was in a big office alone with them. I was faced so that I was looking at a huge portrait of President Bush 1.

It was so strange how mad they were about Margaret Thatcher 's name being mentioned in the song. It was also strange that they were stealing my property, especially music. They wanted me to destroy it in front of them, I couldn't bring myself to follow their orders. We were in that office for so long and I wasn't allowed to go to the head or given any water or chow the entire time and threatened with insubordination. I gave in because I knew they would get their way and it would hurt the other military females. There were not many of us at that time. I asked that this be kept quite and not to go on my service record as being disciplined. They agreed and I destroyed it. I was so mad and confused and hurt. I had a perfect record and was excellent at my job. Having this music would have ended all that? Obviously I have not forgotten or gotten over what I learned that day.

Fucking hate the military culture.

I love her contributions to a bunch of loosely similar dubby UK electronica. Like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUVErnrbVEc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEr0Bxl6yhw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLR2ZPFz8CE

these are all so good, I love her in the "Visions of You" video just like, grooving

One of my favorite things of her is this groovy collab she did with U2 “I’m not your baby” (discovered it on Wenders’ End of Violence OST but it might have been recorded before that)

She sang Visions Of You with the Invaders Of The Heart when I saw them at The Marquee around the time of the single. I was impressed!

She is currently receiving treatment for mental health problems in a Dublin institution following the tragic death of her son. I hope she gets better help than he did.

Absolutely. Speaking as someone who has had relatives struggling with mental health, it's really sad to hear about her struggles on a regular basis, much more than any other news. It's really daunting and unfortunate to see how it can be a lifelong struggle, and how much unending work it can take to deal with it. Not just for her but for anyone.

I'm seeing the new documentary tonight!! I am SO excited.

Just got a message that Sinead has pulled out of her gig for the arts festival next month.

Had her hug me once in Dublin in the mid 90s.

Looks like she cancelled a current tour due to having to deal with coping with the death of her son. Tour would have included date in GIAF.

yeah, the announcement (advised to take the rest of the year off and reschedule in 2023 when she's feeling better) is on the opening page of her site https://www.sineadoconnor.com/

Those are all great Josh, thanks for reminding me of them - I always slot this with them as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ31yNp6Nao

I'm seeing the new documentary tonight!! I am SO excited.

― music for A★TEENS’ musicians (Stevie D(eux)), Friday, June 17, 2022 11:14 AM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

how was it? might see it on Wednesday

Mikal Gilmore has a long and great Facebook post more or less reviewing the documentary (starting with a few comments on the new Marilyn Monroe and Elvis movies to create some context), but you need to have an account and follow him to see it.

Also I watched Year of the Horse again - great performance, it's worth tracking down the DVD that pairs it with an earlier, lesser concert video (also an excellent performance, but ruined by intrusive video effects). Otherwise, it's visible here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iTviZRVKxA

A helluva post.

that was a great post.

This is infuriating, fuck Prince's estate: "The urge to insult her some more even crept into the making of this film, when Prince’s estate refused the use of the song “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Prince’s sibling, Sharon Nelson, said, “I didn’t feel [Sinéad] deserved to use the song my brother wrote in her documentary, so we declined. His version is the best.” It was an ungenerous refusal on the estate’s part, and an unworthy statement. Prince’s version was not the best. He didn’t even originally stake out the song for himself, but instead assigned it to a side project of his, the Family, and it sat merely as filler on the band’s sole album from 1985. Though Prince had recorded his own version in 1984, he never released it. That version didn’t appear until 2018 as a posthumous single, though Prince had taken to performing the song live years after O’Connor had her hit with it. Sinéad apotheosized “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and in doing so won her place on the international popular music stage with her mesmeric rendition. She is the whole—and sole—reason people know the song, the sole reason why, thirty-two years later, it still speaks to a hurt memory that can still speak to our hurt hearts. Sinéad O’Connor is why “Nothing Compares 2 U” is indelible. It stands as one the greatest singles of all time."

Seems like a perfectly normal reasonable person, this sister:

https://twitter.com/Sharon_L_Nelson

oh jesus, fuck that family

i'm sure she really dislikes all the money Sinead's version of that song has made for the estate

Yeah, it's fascinating to realize Prince never ONCE got "Nothing Compares 2 U" right.

I love Prince, but he's always been a real dick to O'Connor over that song. It's like O'Connor did something to it that he didn't/couldn't and that hurt his ego.

I'd drop the "it's like."

*shakes head* Fuck, man.

Oof, terrible. Way too young. I'll be honest, I just never really clicked fully with her music, but I always respected the hell out of her and understood why people did fall so hard for her. RIP, hope she's found some degree of peace.

RIP little bird. You'll be missed.

I kept hoping she'd have her late-career renaissance moment.

This is a terrible loss. RIP.

horrible, horrible news

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z_GXwF6GE4

damn. she was a real one. that's all I can say about it.

This is terrible news and makes me sad

the documentary on showtime was very affecting...some amazing footage of her as a young performer.

i thought a lot about it, like i feel like most musicians, or a least i feel this way, have a certain knack for something, or at least a clever way of going about it...but not to sound uh rockist or anything, but there's something about people like her

it's beyond regular musical talent, like a pure thing, that pure voice she had, whoever gave it to her, i guess sinead would say god did...just a pure pure pure thing, that sound that came out of her, like something so profound you are born with it, that ability...not to say you don't learn how to sing better or have craft but it's got to be there, inside you when you were born. it's just a really deep thing to think about, how it must be to have that.

I know I posted it well upthread somewhere but this performance has lived with me for years, and years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeIHZvZTJTg

The Lion and the Cobra was one of the first two CDs I bought, back in...1987? Early 1988, probably, 'cause I bought it after seeing the "Mandinka" video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNXYFOPRuQ0

awful yet unsurprising news; given her life in some ways I can't even say I blame her, but I wish this had been different

man, i remember seeing that grammy performance of "mandinka" when I was 10 years old or so and just being amazed — nothing else like that.

i've always loved this one, not sure if I could actually listen to it today, though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRgnU4C1S-g

that moment when she almost whispers the words..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km64pT6bDXs

Sinead deserved so much better than she got. And we all know it. And I think we're all grieving for that too.

— Gino Fellino 🤌🤌 🔪🦀🤌🤌 (@Bubblenoma) July 26, 2023

Damn RIP. Truly wish she is at peac.e

Unjustifiably canceled for shining light on the dark evils of the Catholic Church, sacrificing her career/mental health/financial security in the process.

The cassingle for "Mandinka" was in my cassette player for months (b/w "Drink Before The War") back in the good old days.

Wow, RIP

I saw her perform on the Universal Mother tour; she was a warm & powerful presence. And I still pull out Throw Down Your Arms every Christmas. Such a sad & terrible way to end. RIP

There are few artists I admired more in this world, RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGSaWR-DCQ8

This is one of the prettiest songs of all time. My wife used to sing it to each of our kids when they were babies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chv1JkArc4g

nooooooooooooo
i have nothing to say, she was the best, i hope she is at peace <3 xoxo

I was lucky enough to see her on her first North American tour. I'll never forget it. She was so intense as to be almost frightening. Taken too soon after too much hardship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiEcut07GrM

that 89 grammys performance was one of the first things i remember seeing of her, just unforgettable.

shaved head, torn jeans & boots with that amazing voice. she hooked me for life. never got to see her live & so wish that i had

A story I read once from her producer/engineer that in a way really summed her up.

The only difficulty we had took place during what should have been a relatively easy mix on the SSL at Eden Studios, because there wasn't much instrumentation. For some reason, Sinéad hated compression, and when I'd come in each morning there would be a piece of white A4 paper on the console saying 'NO FUCKING COMPRESSORS!' The problem was, she had a reverse mic technique. When most people sing loud, they back off the mic, but she used to do the opposite — she would stand away from the mic when singing quietly and then scream right into it.

I’m at a loss for words. Her records were tremendously important to me. I was lucky to see her live in 1990, and it was a movingly contradictory combination of slightly-uneasy-on-a-large-stage (Chicago Theatre) and absolutely commanding the full attention of everyone in the building. I’ll never forget it.

i'm crushed

I just watched the Showtime doc this month. The making of the video for Nothing Compares was really moving. I hope she is in a better place.

There are few artists I admired more in this world, RIP

― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, July 26, 2023

really this. I'm reeling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yuQLPkdRsI

RIP and to hell with the catholic church.

i saw her at camp bestival in 2014.
to hear that voice in a gorgeous live setting was rather special.
this song was built up and up, and made me totally get something in my eyes.
i always hoped she would find peace and a good and happy life.

rest in peace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXyGEw8lHG8

haven't explored much beyond the first two albums, but both had such excellent songwriting to accompany the incredible vocals. she was so young then, really a shame what she had to go through.

rest in peace

she was only 20 when lion and the cobra came out, and she'd already lived so much

Search: The Gospel Oak EP (1997). A gorgeous little collection (Josh linked its best song above).

ALL her stuff is worth hearing, there are good songs everywhere. So sad to hear this, really hits hard not least because to follow her for the past 36 years has been to necessarily immerse yourself in her emotional landscape and — often — to sense how much pain underlay it. Has there ever been a Sinead fan who didn't understand how hard happiness was for her to find, and who didn't wish it for her?

I really worried about her after her son died last year. I was afraid it would be too much for her. R.I.P.

So glad I did get to see her in 1990, she was mesmerizing, one of my top 10 shows.

guys, I’m so sad. she deserved a lot better. what a fucking genius.

guys, I’m so sad. she deserved a lot better. what a fucking genius.

She was right. About everything.

Damn right she was.

this is one of the old posts that is nice to read now:

I remember never once being able to turn away from the vid for "Nothing Compares 2 U" no matter how many sqaudrillion times it had been played on MTV. I remember it stopping my step-father dead in his tracks.....rendering him positively still and silent until its finish. "Hot damn!" he said softly, afterwards.
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, March 4, 2005 8:57 PM (eighteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

wow....

https://heavenlyrecordings.bandcamp.com/track/trouble-of-the-world-a-cappella

"The Emperor's New Clothes" has one of my favorite fadeouts.

What a great spiritual for her style

A more or less apolitical Canadian child during the 80s and on into the very early 90s, Sinead taught me that Thatcher sucked even before I learned that Reagan sucked.

("As a...")

And it's worth emphasizing: she produced her fucking debut album on her own.

godddamn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wMZvznTTGg

Some tributes being collected here, from the prime minister of Ireland to Ice-T

https://deadline.com/2023/07/sinead-oconnor-tributes-reactions-billy-corgan-outlander-susanna-hoffs-1235448768/

Alfred, yes, I was just playing the first two albums again and marveling at the last couple minutes of that song...

I always loved Jump in the River, which is the lead track on the Married to the Mob soundtrack. Something about it really sounds ahead of its time.

I love her electric guitar on "Jump in the River."

Fiercely honest and sweet and funny, she was talented in ways I’m not sure she completely understood.

oh fuck you Billy Corgan

yeah I noticed that

here is what someone who isn't a loser would say

Respect to Sinead….. She stood for something… Unlike most people…. Rest Easy..🙏🏽 https://t.co/3nbO3w22zv

— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) July 26, 2023

A heroic figure. rip.

I play the lion and the cobra all the time. Very few albums go as hard as that one.

“And you should’ve let the light onnnnn” fuck I’m so depressed

Fiercely honest and sweet and funny, she was talented in ways I’m not sure she completely understood.

oh fuck you Billy Corgan

― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, July 26, 2023 9:48 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

He was not talented in ways i'm sure he never understood at all.

lol

don't know what to write at all, just chiming in to say how saddened i am by this just like all of you. the lion and the cobra was such an important record for me in the first year that i started caring about music. a friend of mine and i would write various lyrics from it on notes that we would pass to each other in school. just straight out writing the lyrics down. why? it felt powerful somehow to write the words she sang. her songs were like incantations. spells. and they worked! they summoned these feelings from deep down inside me. they still do. i'm scared of her records. i don't put them on much. i can't handle the rawness, how i know i'm going to feel when i listen to them.

oh man no. I'd been thinking about her this week.

mum saw her at the Port Fairy Folk Festival in Australia a few/many years back - i remember mum just complained that she “talked too much” between songs and “why can’t she just sing”

hmm yes but also counterpoint why can’t YOU stay home & listen to the album if you’d prefer not to engage w a human performer its such a dilemma roll my damn eyes all the way back forever to my own grave lol

She deserved better from the world. RIP

this is just heartbreaking. rest in peace, Sinead.

I've been playing a lot of her 'featured artist' singles this evening - no slur on her own work, once you've written Troy you have nothing to prove, but a) they are her own work too and b) I loved how generous she was with her amazing voice, and how she would lend it to often nakedly political stuff. I won't bombard you with YouTubes, but consider visiting or revisiting 1000 Mirrors (with Asian Dub Foundation), A Prayer for England (with Massive Attack), Empire (with Bomb The Bass and Benjamin Zephaniah) and from 1991 Visions of You with Jah Wobble:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuG1JN_pIUU
(also Haunted with Shane McGowan, just because I love a soppy love song)

"A Prayer for England" is an imprecation whispered in the ear of every prime minister.

I also really really love this version of "Haunted," with Trevor Horn production and a video all optimistically designed to make it a hit. It should've been!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q7307IWwr4

Her final live performance was February 12, 2020 in Santa Cruz, CA at a small theater.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwluxHHP1vU

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/sinead-oconnor/2020/rio-theatre-santa-cruz-ca-6b98362a.html

I'm also upset. Just chiming in to say that when I heard the Lion and the Cobra at 13 years old, I was astounded. I'll admit that it informed my vision of a future girlfriend. The shaved head and passion. And I guess she was really pretty. It sounds dumb, but I'm just channeling 13-year-old me.

she absolutely deserved so much better

the lion and the cobra is such a fantastic album, one of a kind

RIP. She was a force to be reckoned with. One of a kind.

I'm also upset. Just chiming in to say that when I heard the Lion and the Cobra at 13 years old, I was astounded. I'll admit that it informed my vision of a future girlfriend. The shaved head and passion. And I guess she was really pretty. It sounds dumb, but I'm just channeling 13-year-old me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n14lwdpYkAA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=318ZDSy3zn4

Black Boys on Mopeds certainly made me lose it today.

this is it for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcO0fEabWHI

Listening to I Do Not Want right now — which I don't actually listen to that much, Lion & Cobra is kind of my Sinead go-to — and it is so good. The songs are great, the arrangements are great, and she is such an amazingly present singer. So vibrant and intimate. And I've heard this album hundreds of times, I know all that, but it doesn't fade with familiarity.

Heartbreaking. I haven't even looked at the news yet, but given her struggles over many years, I imagine it's what's been feared for a very long time. Absolutely love her music, and it was wonderful to see something like a resurgence over the past decade as people re-discovered her work or re-evaluated what they overlooked. (There was a stretch in the '00s where I felt like no one I knew ever talked about her, much less put on her records, which was remarkable for someone who had been a household name not too long ago.)

She was probably my favorite singer of the past 40 years, for that amazing voice and for the way she could get inside a song and make it sound like her own thoughts and words, but she's so much more than her records. She never let popularity re-define what she should be or what she should say through her work, and she spoke up LOUDLY for a lot of children who needed it when the world refused to listen. I wish that brought her enough solace, but it meant a hell of a lot to so many people.

Re: Gospel Oak, I especially like this one (though it was released elsewhere too):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GDT-3pARec

Faith and Courage is probably worth revisiting too. "Jealous," "No Man's Woman" and "Daddy I'm Fine" are favorites.

Beth Orton’s Instagram post will burn you.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvLU4kxNd9Q/

Was looking for video from those that went with all the tracks on Red Hot & Blue, but this keeps turning up, from I Do Not Want..., hopefully the same take:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK9dtZSIj-U

Terrific tribute by Dave Holmes: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a44655422/sinead-oconnor-death-tribute/

no words yet. I can’t.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LhIkAKJzs8

Don't argue amongst yourselves
Because of the loss of me
I haven't gone anywhere
But out of my body
Reach out and you'll touch me
Make effort to speak to me
Call out and you'll hear me
Be happy for me
Reach out and you'll touch me
Make effort to speak to me
Call out and you'll hear me
Be happy for me

Listening to “I Feel Different” this evening broke me

like being swamped by an emotional wave

great anecdote..."oh, it's you, Russell"

Last year, working in Ireland, having a pint in the cold outside a Dalkey pub with some new friends, a woman with purpose strode past us. Puffy parker zipped to the nape and her bowed head covered in a scarf. One of my new friends muttered an exclamation, jumped up

— Russell Crowe (@russellcrowe) July 26, 2023

Beth Orton’s post echoes my heart. I was rooting so hard for Sinead, especially the last ten years with her “”embarrassing”” admissions of personal crises, which others saw as fodder for clicks and titters, I felt deeply moved by the bravery of her admissions. I wanted old age and Joni Jam for Sinead, a moment when she could just rest and bask and no longer needed to be in a state of artistic and personal struggle. I am so sad that this never came for her when she was alive but I feel grateful for her incredible works nonetheless

Missed it but KEXP apparently did a great tribute today - FWIW, here's a link to the playlist:

https://www.kexp.org/playlist/?month=July&day=26&year=2023&hour=2%3A00&m=PM&offset=0

That KEXP link mentioned some recent tweets - turns out she opened a new account this month, and it's heartbreaking to read. It's like she was trying to restart her life - she mentions moving back to London for the first time in decades, posts a video of herself and announces a new album close to completion - but also still in mourning over her son.

https://twitter.com/786OmShahid

I didn't realize there was a video to that song she did with Terry Hall. Love how she smiles in the background when he takes his first verse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqk4qzmRpS0

Speaking of playlists, one of those tweets links to a playlist by her: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4tJNA0rDI3sdlO5fF2f4jW?si=b5e44c459e7b4847

Looks excellent. Tons of reggae, assorted other things. I'm going to put it on.

Thanks for pointing that out! FWIW here's her playlists in general, including one called "Songs I Wanna Cover 2023":

https://open.spotify.com/user/jahismykeeper

wow at that Terry Hall duet, lovely vid that <3

Thanks for pointing that out! FWIW here's her playlists in general, including one called "Songs I Wanna Cover 2023":

https://open.spotify.com/user/jahismykeeper🕸

“Here But I’m Gone” by Curtis Mayfield as the final song in her covers wishlist is particularly heartbreaking.

...and to think what she could have done with "Sign Your Name"!

Heartbreaking loss. The ilx community does provide some solace for which I’m thankful.

Adding a live solo version of Danny Boy from 1993. Just Sinead and her haunting voice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PweUGhCZNiM

Letterman's official account has uploaded all of her appearances today in tribute.

I haven't seen this put up here, so here's her U.S. television debut from Late Night with David Letterman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnUI4a7BKpE

I mentioned this for her on the Schaffer/Letterman thread, but that a snippet of that "Mandinka" performance was included in a "Musical Guests" clip package during his 10th(?) Anniversary Primetime special (filmed in the same of the notorious SNL appearance in '92) , and the fucking audience booed and the goddamn network left it in.

'for her'="over" & 'in the same of'="in the wake of" damn phone.

Seemingly against many odds this works

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJy77VV4okk

The Chieftains, Van Morrison & Sinead

I’d forgotten she’d done this, though I wish her voice was more prominent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KX05v4dpss

Angry. I feel like all of us let her down

She sings on a couple tracks on Richard Wright's solo album from 1996 - this one is better. It's an interesting pairing and I wish she could have contributed more - otherwise it's just 1990s era Floyd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-Zg_znrZtk

Morrissey made a blistering post arguing the same, even more furious than Beth Orton's, though it doesn't help that he draws parallels between himself and O'Connor.

xxp the performance of "Mother" at the Berlin Wall is surreal - herself, Roger Waters, and 3/5 of The Band (Danko, Helm, Hudson).

Found this, where she appears on Jon Stewart's old show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPOM20kgWlc

Forgot to mention, I didn't realize this song was inspired by her brief relationship with Peter Gabriel.

Yeah Morrissey can stfu, he’s a racist piece of shit and O’Connor actually cared about racism, refugees and helping people.

Don't know about her recorded work but some of the footage of her singing on TV shows has been breathtaking to watch.

Sinéad O'Connor and Shane MacGowan performing Haunted on the White Room in 1995. Magical pic.twitter.com/MRIqzJFMGN

— Birmingham 81 (@Birmingham_81) July 26, 2023

This is something

1993 pic.twitter.com/xMY7XuO93R

— KillianM2 TV Archive (@KillianM2) July 26, 2023

Sinead O’Conner shaving the Public Enemy logo onto her head to protest the rap category not being televised at the Grammys was an incredible move pic.twitter.com/N9GEIxw3XC

— Moody Waters (@aniconic_) March 25, 2022

in tears reading orton

Almost too obvious to say but "Nothing Compares 2 U" really is one of THE great cover versions isn't it?

xpost - Morrissey's post was completely self serving as always

Almost too obvious to say but "Nothing Compares 2 U" really is one of THE great cover versions isn't it?

― bain4z,

I mean, even goddamn Prince couldn't figure out how to perform his own song (and he was a hateful bastard, according to O'Connor herself).

(xp) I seriously wish I'd never read it.

I saw her last in ... 2007? She was incredible, of course. I went back to look how I summed it up at the time: "At its most forceful that soprano of hers could bring armies to their knees, and O’Connor often sang like she believed that was possible."

That night she also dedicated a cover of "Rivers of Babylon" to Britney Spears. Iirc a few people perhaps laughed or something (there was a lot of Britney in the news at the time, most/much of it not sympathetic). She was right about so much.

Died in London it seems, she'd only recently moved there

She was living in Notting Hill at some point in the 1990s. I know because I was working in the Exchange bookshop when she came in one day and sold off her book collection - a life decluttering, I think. The most amazing item was a copy of Dylan's Collected Lyrics, signed by Bob to Sinead, probably for the 30th-anniversary concert. My colleague tried to persuade her not to part with this, but she didn't want to know.

I was always struck by her interaction with Kristofferson at the Dylan tribute, not just by the way he gives her such generous support and comfort but the way she reacts like someone who rarely received such things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4fVxcT00Sc

I swear, someone posted her performing "Fire On Babylon" on one of the late night shows. I thought it was in this thread, but I can't find it. Nor can I now find it on YouTube. A real shame, as that performance was absolute fire.

wow this is great, i know rourke and joyce were her rhythm section on an early tour, but for obvious reasons this means even more coming from her

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOHhzcPLxSQ

Yeah, that realization hit me when the lights came on. I had no idea until they were standing there right in front of me.

I'm shaking with anger watching these savages at a Bob Dylan show boo her.

I swear, someone posted her performing "Fire On Babylon" on one of the late night shows. I thought it was in this thread, but I can't find it. Nor can I now find it on YouTube. A real shame, as that performance was absolute fire.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux),

Letterman! I watched it at the time.

Sinead singing on ‘visions of you’ , was a huge act of generosity. Typical of her . Refused to take a penny for the session . That track had a massive positive influence on my life . From writing the track with her voice in mind, through to recording it was transcendental

— Jah Wobble (@realjahwobble) July 27, 2023

This is one of those deaths that hit me especially hard. I feel old today. I don't think I've felt like this over the death of a musician since Prince, or maybe even Joe Strummer.

The Dylan clip is surreal - like, how many of those people even knew why they were booing her?

Letterman! I watched it at the time.

When her voice just takes off . . . my god. The only other artist I can think of who (occasionally) has that effect is Bjork.

Something often overlooked, or rarely mentioned, in that Dylan clip is that twice the band tries to start playing, and twice she silences them. Had they started playing and drowned out the crowd, I bet the crowd would have come around. I've seen it happen many times. But she doesn't let them off that easy. She chooses the more difficult, the more confrontational, the more righteous route.

Beth Orton’s Instagram post will burn you.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvLU4kxNd9Q/

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, July 26, 2023 8:34 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Ugh. Worth posting her in full for anyone not on the platform:

I am not lost for words, I’m furious. All this bullshit about mental health and supposedly supporting artists yet nothing gets done to protect the vulnerable. Some go to school to learn their craft and some sing for their life because it depends on it. Sinead should have been better taken care of. The cruelty and mockery she experienced over way too many years for being exactly who we needed her to be so we could feel the feelings we would have been unable to know otherwise is appalling. She was an artist in the highest and most righteous form. There is no chart to steer through the songs that come from the soul. The hardest graft is not to learn the lines but to live them. Sinead O’Conner was a seer and she was paper thin, see through, she should have been held with the upmost love and care and respect. She found success and made people money from what tormented her, it was clearly extreme and shocking to find success from doing what came naturally to her. How brutally lonely for someone as in need of love as she was, someone who gave pure love, pure anger and endless forgiveness with all the wisdom and best will in the world. Sinead sang me through losing my mother, she gave me my tears and allowed me to feel a grief I wouldn’t have understood without her honesty and truth. She deserved medals of bravery for her service. I’m glad she got to see some love in the last couple of years, but too little too late to save her health. I hope she finds the peace she was searching for all the way through. Words will now fail me. Thank you dearest hearted brilliant brave women.

“IT IS NO MEASURE OF HEALTH TO BE WELL ADJUSTED TO A PROFOUNDLY SICK SOCIETY”

#sineadoconner

They laugh 'cause they know they're untouchable
Not because what I said was wrong

Tori Amos played in town last night and there were guesses she'd do a tribute. They were correct.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgnJNLH24CY

The line that keeps coming back to me is "I have refused to take part." She did that so many times, for so many good reasons, and now it feels like an epitaph.

Her first SNL appearance (September 29, 1990), at 27:10 and 50:14

https://archive.org/details/saturday-night-live-s-16-e-01-kyle-maclachlan-sinead-o-connor

re Morrissey, JPEGMAFIA has a few remarks:

What JPEGMAFIA told me about Morrissey pic.twitter.com/WnCV2ntPHh

— Thomas Hobbs (@thobbsjourno) July 24, 2023

hahaha amazing 10/10

Nice bit from Jamie Lee Curtis

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvLFNcByOvv/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Those SNL songs shared by Tarfumes are excellent

I was kind of bummed to discover that she recently made vague but unflattering remarks about Kristofferson (I guess bummed because it complicates that positive impression of his support for her).

My god...

Camille Paglia's Profiles in Cocaine continues with saying Sinéad O'Connor deserved to be abused as a child pic.twitter.com/vLlqVsrOe0

— cris (@ilchinealach) June 29, 2023

Great tribute on CBC today, featuring none other than Maura.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwwxDNqigNo

It's been a tough 24 hours. Man.

That first SNL performance was really amazing, especially "Last Day of Our Acquaintance" - I think that was the first time I ever saw one of her live performances (caught it as a late, late night re-run on NBC back in the '00s) and I went looking for her great live DVD, The Year of the Horse, soon afterwards.

Steve Nieve posted this in tribute, a performance of McGowan's song for Circle of Friends at his 60th birthday celebration - just wonderful:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvMmuERgMWQ/

Re: Camille Paglia, that clip was in the documentary. What a garbage human being.

xp that version of "you're the one" — unbelievable

here's where i wish i actually knew anything about actual music or theory, but been listening to her and she has a very interesting melodic approach, something about the way she uses certain internals that feels very unique to her...

um...again i wish i could explain better but the notes she chooses in relation to each other (sund4r come back bail me out buddy!), the way she hops up and down whatever scale she's using...like two examples i can think of off top are mandika's prechorus:

I don't ^KNOW no shame
I ^FEEL no pain
I ^CAAAAAN'T feel the ^FLAAAAME

or on "Jerusalem"

oh ^OH oh
je ^RUUUUUU sa lem

like the way those notes relate is really distinctive and seems like maybe she's drawing from certain scale or something, i don't know i lack the vocab

via Chaki

In 2011 Sinéad O’Connor was very publicly looking for a boyfriend whilst tweeting the most hilarious, filthy tweets. I collected those tweets & made a montage of them set to her cover of “Someday My Prince Will Come” from Disney’s Snow White. She e-mailed me to say she’d… (1/2)

— Liam Geraghty 🏳️‍⚧️ (@Liam_Geraghty) July 26, 2023

Hahahahaha ums I literally noted that yesterday

I was listening to Jackie (a minor key song) and Sinead hits the raised third (implying a major key) over a bVII chord and I thought “oh yeah, the Sinead note”

But there’s more to it than that— she generally had a “wild card” approach when she switched to her head voice on any yodelling passage— the pitches she hit were often sharpened (think the end of “Mandinka”) giving the phrase that much more emotional intensity. After watching many live versions of many songs you realize she’s basically just feeling out how wild she wants to be with any given performance

In Bill Flanagan's U2 book he notes how during the recording of "You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart" Sinead would yell harrowing shit into the mike, step away and whisper, do it again, then happily overdub her own harmonies. Bono, Gavin Friday, and Eno were amazed at her vocal control.

ums and fgti i concur: i think she had a terrifically precise ear for (for want of a better way to say it) the delivery -- with superb confidence and exact force -- of microtonal grace notes and ornaments in a manner she p much seems to have herself invented

(by which i mean i can't quickly think of anyone she reminds me of in this)

xpost thanks the knowledge fgti! must have missed your post in the flood yesterday but that's cool like the raised/sharp stuff over certain chords, that's what I was trying to say in a dummy way

May Sinead O’Connor rest in peace. Let me share my moment meeting this Great Women. I performed at the @MTV music awards crying singing band in the USA. When I got backstage, the first person to greet me was her, knowing the weight of the world was on me, fighting this fight for…

— Luther Luke Campbell (@unclelukereal1) July 27, 2023

damn it sucks to get only the opening of these stories bc i quit twixer, fucking elon

Now we need to hear from Billy Idol

...and Steve Lawrence (still alive at 88)!

and Henry Kissinger (still alive at 873!)

Stevie Ray Vaughan is dead, and we can't get Jon Bon Jovi on a helicopter.

This chatter about her vocal control and technique is why I think she was such an incredible performer. She didn't just have technical skill and ability but she knew exactly how to service a song best by using her talent. She could have the most measured, considered performances, hitting every note and flourish with grace and precision, but it never felt studied or forced. Whether it was her own songs or covers - she knew how to draw the full emotional range out with her voice, and made it seem so instinctive and obvious.

I found myself getting really teary today listening to The Emperors New Clothes. It's one of her most straightforward "pop" songs, and yet it's just such a vulnerable, unflinching, honest portrayal of pregnancy - an experience that as a man I will never fully comprehend but she made feel so understandable. I'm sad for the strife she endured in her life and the tragedy of her premature death. But I'm also sad because what she represented - fearlessness, defiance, sincerity and charming vulnerability - they're all personality traits and features I would aspire to, and as both an artist and a public figure she really was a role model for the type of person I wish I could be. I'm sad that her presence isn't in the world to keep making it better, and I'm sad that it took the world so long to realise what a difference someone like her could make.

I never saw the Letterman version of Fire on Babylon, but the Top of the Pops version is pretty amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUdhwJZE7AE

for omar et al

May Sinead O’Connor rest in peace. Let me share my moment meeting this Great Women. I performed at the MTV music awards crying singing band in the USA. When I got backstage, the first person to greet me was her, knowing the weight of the world was on me, fighting this fight for free speech and hip-hop. She hug me we talked. She told me I was fighting a good fight. She knew the industry was not supporting me. She wanted me to know she was. I always love that woman for that. May God bless her soul my condolences go out to her family. 🙏

https://play.acast.com/s/blindboy/sineadoconnor

she talks a bit about her approach vocally in this interview (interview starts around 25 min mark or so, vocal part I forget when), use of bel canto singing style etc

I found myself getting really teary today listening to The Emperors New Clothes. It's one of her most straightforward "pop" songs, and yet it's just such a vulnerable, unflinching, honest portrayal of pregnancy - an experience that as a man I will never fully comprehend but she made feel so understandable. I'm sad for the strife she endured in her life and the tragedy of her premature death. But I'm also sad because what she represented - fearlessness, defiance, sincerity and charming vulnerability - they're all personality traits and features I would aspire to, and as both an artist and a public figure she really was a role model for the type of person I wish I could be. I'm sad that her presence isn't in the world to keep making it better, and I'm sad that it took the world so long to realise what a difference someone like her could make.

― boxedjoy,

Co-sign. And that outro!

I used to try desperately to pause the Emperor’s New Clothes video on the one frame where she smiles just so I could see her smile for more than a fraction of a second. That video is burned into my brain!! Also boxedjoy otm bc like many odd girls my age I longed to be as free as she was.

Her dancing!

Great song. Heard it for the first time tonight.

I called my sister today to talk about various family matters and out of nowhere she said, "I'm really sad about Sinead." "Me too," I said. She talked about how I Do Not Want was her and her college bff's favorite album the year it came out and they played it to death. She put it on yesterday after not hearing it for a while and she said she'd never really absorbed what a great writer she was, the words didn't sink in when she was younger. Anyway, a generational touchstone for a lot of us.

CAN’T BEAR TO BE IN ANOTHER CITY
one where you’re not

Always liked this: Willie Nelson & Sinéad O'Connor, "Don't Give Up"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO6fAJcN89k

heard “daddy i’m fine” just now for the first time in forever and whooosh total time machine

i fucking LOVED this song at the time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA2gIyXRXwU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gTppAHVy28

"In This Heart" always makes me cry. Tonight it's wrecking me.

Looking at her discography on Wikipedia, I'm amazed at the number of collaborations and guest spots she did for other musicians. Such a generous soul.

My particular brand of sad is gravitating to the common ground between her and Terry Hall and then with Chris Cornell, who also did a version of “Nothing Compares 2 U.”

When Bob Mortimer met Sinead O’Connor. I’m roaring laughing at this story from his autobiography ‘And Away…’ pic.twitter.com/oFfYlnQPdB

— Paul Howard (@AkaPaulHoward) July 1, 2023

Um…

Okay, I guess it was kind of a good and in-character put-down or something.

Think you need to have a good working knowledge of Bob for this to be funny, yes.

not meant as a put down at all I think! but yeah 200% in character as "first thing that would pop into Mortimer's mind when talking to anyone at all".

Pink just paid tribute to Sinead O’Connor and it was so beautiful, it made me cry pic.twitter.com/CXQO1TGBid

— karen (@KarenBoston) July 27, 2023

Here is a defence of that obit in The Guardian by the writer.

She sounds tone deaf.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I interviewed her and reviewed her numerous times. This is the most recent pic.twitter.com/7hcEV8MEIP

— Caroline Sullivan (@TheCSullivan) July 27, 2023

Something quite lovely that I'd never seen before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fE8l25CG2E

That's such a good cover! Perfect.

Apropos of nothing, I am struck by how much this Eno-assisted track from 2000’s Faith and Courage sounds like Sinead’s nod to Judee Sill (a sister spirit for sure):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yuQLPkdRsI

Assuming that previous one is a Go-Betweens cover. Looking forward to clicking later.

Ha sorry. Somebody once referred to “Apology Accepted” as “All Apologies” and since then I have gotten them *Mixed Up*

interesting that her version is so restrained, I kept expecting her to throw in some Cobain growls

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/28/david-holmes-on-producing-sinead-oconnor-final-album

emma's song is secretly everything for me.

I play it for people and they're like "idk" idgi" "it's weird" "it's fine?" ... and I'm like she has always been a priestess in communication with something deep and strange and real and utterly truthful and I am undone

not much of a crier, but jesus, listening to and watching various performances have me weeping this week ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbre5Fs9m8I

I didn’t realize this bootleg existed - 8 CD’s of her non-LP work:

https://www.45worlds.com/cdalbum/cd/nc640109xb

Been reading her lyrics online the past few days and this, this morning, made me laugh:

https://flic.kr/p/2oSj39U

Chrissie Hynde posted a nice tribute on Facebook:

Like everyone else, I’ve read many tributes to Sinéad O’Connor in the last couple days. Personally, I felt sadness for her during her life, but my immediate response upon hearing the news was a kind of relief. Every step of the way for her seemed to be a mixture of joy and torture. A true artist.

I was talking to my mate, the singer Helen Terry, about what a laugh she was at our Linda McCartney tribute, arriving every day to rehearsals to hang out with George Michael, smoke pot and just be in the atmosphere of something going on. Helen reminded me of how she kept throwing her knickers at George. I recall she also liked to hold a microphone to her arse and fart in it, possessed as she was of a schoolboy humour.

On the day of the show I was wearing a pair of gold stiletto heeled shoes and Sinead told me how she’d stolen some similar ones when she was a teenager to wear to a Pretenders show. I immediately took them off, gave them to her, and she wore them the rest of the night. Every time I looked over at her she reminded me of a little kid looking down at her new shoes, moving her feet at different angles to admire them. Then during the concert, she made a funny remark about Neil Finn which made headlines the next day. She didn’t set out to steal the headlines but did because she made everyone laugh.

I was also at the Bob Dylan tribute. I listened to her sing Dylan’s I Believe In You at rehearsals. It was absolutely breathtaking and I couldn’t wait to hear her sing it on the night. But when she heard a few people booing in the audience (many were cheering but I guess she only heard the detractors) she apparently just couldn’t start the song. Booker-T’s hands hovered over the keyboards while everyone waited for her to start singing. Instead she pulled out her in-ear monitors, and went into an unaccompanied version of a Bob Marley song. The next day the headlines were about Sinéad not Dylan. She didn’t intend that, but again, it just seemed to happen wherever she went.

Apart from all her other well documented torments, I think starting out in the business at an early age, getting famous and the notoriety she attracted, must have been hard.

People seem to think that anyone who gets on stage is a natural born show-off but I don’t think that’s the case most of the time. I think It’s more often destiny.

I read she reckoned the price of fame is ‘you pay with your life’.

Now she can sing with the other angels.

XCH

both of her records from the 2010s are super fucking good and i regret not listening to them until now

x-post: feel a bit weird about "the news was a kind of relief" part.

Yeah me too - I don't feel the same way, but I think I understand where she's coming from and why some people have that reaction. (Maybe oversimplifying it, but some people don't want to see someone they hold dearly living in constant turmoil.) I thought the anecdotes were great though.

lol @ farting into the microphone
RIP to a real one <3

also Sinead admiring her new gold stilettos from diff angles - deeeply relatable

i want one million stories about her smoking weed with george michael. my people

dream blunt rotation too

The last series of posts from VG and Ivy are extremely otm

Every image conjures a scene I could only dream to witness and feel blessed to have lived through & appreciate

This story has gone viral:

Newstalk host Sean Moncrieff told how the Nothing Compares 2 U hitmaker paid for an anguished mum's counselling after she shared her story live on air.

He told listeners: "I never met Sinead O'Connor but I do have this one kind of story that's kind of related to the show.

"We'd had the parenting slot as usual and one question came in from a woman who was absolutely distraught.

"And then this woman went on to describe her situation, which was absolutely horrendous, she was a single parent, her partner had just disappeared off the face of the map.

"She had two kids as I recall, and I think at least one of them had behavioural difficulties so she was having to cope with that.

"Plus, also, she was broke. She had no money. She had virtually no means of support. She was not really managing to put food on the table and she was feeling the wheels coming off, she was in an awful state."

He continued: "And this woman had said, 'I'd love to go to counselling, I know I need counselling, but I just can't afford it.'

"And within two or three minutes, we got a text in following that, saying 'I'll pay for her counselling'.

"And it was from Sinead O'Connor. And apparently she did this kind of thing, I've heard from people who knew her, she used to do these kinds of things all the time, below the radar.

"They were the kind of things you wouldn't really hear about. And there was a lot we knew about Sinead O'Connor and in the public domain, but perhaps an awful lot we didn't know at the same time.

"And that almost stuck with me as an example of somebody, literally and figuratively, putting their money where their mouth was.

"And I just thought that I might share that with you."

Reminds me of George Michael and George Harrison and Prince and Frank Sinatra (even though the latter two were real assholes to her) and how after they died, you had a flood of stories on all the not-publicized or anonymous donations they’d give to other people in need of help.

Hung out with not one but two friends last night who had no idea "Nothing Compares 2 U" was written by Prince.

Hope you unfriended them

lol

Ha! What's amazing is they each considered themselves fans, and had really strong memories from the late '80s and early '90s of hearing her stuff on college radio. I sometimes appreciate the perspective of regular people, who love music but don't necessarily focus on the details.

Knew that was coming. Espied it way out there on the zing horizon.

from Lou Reed's FB page:

[i]Lou Reed had a copy of Sinéad O’Connor's debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, in his personal album collection. Lou performed at shows with Sinéad O’Connor on a few occasions, beginning with the Bob Dylan tribute shortly after her appearance on SNL.
_________
O’Connor and Reed didn’t really connect that night. But at a similar event held two years later in Carnegie Hall, this time a birthday tribute for Roger Daltrey of The Who, the two once again shared the stage. She writes, “The only other time I remember being starstruck was when I met Lou Reed, a person I didn’t realize I loved so much until I met him. I had fallen in love with his album ‘New York,’ especially the track called ‘Busload of Faith,’ and I had listened to it a lot.” O’Connor put out feelers about singing backup for Reed, whose family name was originally Rabinowitz until his father changed it to Reed.

O’Connor recalls, “… [T]he next thing I knew, Lou Reed came into my dressing room and started talking to me; I could tell that he thought I was cheeky for asking if I could sing backup vocals. But when he said that yes, I could, all I could see was his mouth moving. I couldn’t hear what he was saying anymore; it all came out like a whirl, whirl, whirl sound, as if I were on an acid trip. … It was like having a panic attack…. I did do the backing vocals for Lou, though I can’t remember even what songs because I was not on planet Earth, I was in heaven somewhere. And then I had a beautiful experience with the same beautiful man not long after.”

O’Connor goes on to tell the story about a TV show she and Reed appeared on in London, a kind of round-robin live music show. No one would look at O’Connor, because “the fashion was to treat me like a crazy person, a pariah, because of what I did on ‘SNL.’” Reed, when he came to the dress rehearsal, made a huge point of ignoring absolutely everybody in the room except O’Connor. “He makes it his business to find me, hangs on to me. He hugs me demonstratively warmly as if we know each other really well. It was a really sweet thing to do because he didn’t have to do that, and it changed the way everybody in there reacted to me… I’ve had a very soft spot in my heart for Mr. Lou Reed ever since and I think about him quite a lot.”/i]

.<3

she sold homes & donated proceeds to charity at least twice

1992 donated West Hollywood home sale to Somalians
https://www.deseret.com/1992/12/2/19019219/sinead-donates-house-to-aid-starving-somalis

2003 donated Atlanta home sale to Irish drug & alcohol treatment center
https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2003/10/06/newscolumn4.html

There was a good Washington Post reminiscence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2023/07/28/sinead-oconnor-appreciation-road-trip/

Based on this and other accounts, she seemed like someone who sometimes just sold everything and started over.

Always a surprise to hear a story in which Lou Reed is not an asshole.

Long, personal piece from my pal Mo:

https://burner-account.ghost.io/sinead-oconnor/

Always a surprise to hear a story in which Lou Reed is not an asshole.

Next thing you know a post will surface from her about how nice Alex Chilton was to her#onethread

Or Jonathan Richman even.

Glenn Frey

Well, yeah.

Was really disappointed that her reggae album is not on Spotify.

"Based on this and other accounts, she seemed like someone who sometimes just sold everything and started over."

I just read about her going in to sell a signed dylan album at a record store; the owner pleaded with her not to do it but apparently she was insistent. she doesn't strike me as someone who had strong attachments to 'things'.

Finally started her memoir last night, it's very well written.

I heard "emperor's new clothes" a few years ago, and I noticed then what I did not in 1990: there is no effort to make the words rhyme…I'm sure we can come up with some other examples of very very big pop songs (this song is absolutely part of the pop gestalt of 1990) in which rhyming does not occur…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c0jxooNClM

1. I noticed at the time that Marco Pirroni was her touring guitarist, and he is present in the above, and I think that's Mike Joyce, but I can't make out whether that's Andy rourke on the bass…also, she's not using a plectrum, and when you go hard playing chords like that, you have to have some serious fucking callouses, or else that shit's gonna hurt…

It's Rourke on bass.

Oh this has really gotten me.🥺😭 I’ve taken #SineadOConner leaving us quite hard. Aside from loving her as a musician, I am hard wired to feel love and kinship for unconventional women. She was fierce and vulnerable and complicated and beautiful and I’m so sorry she’s left us. pic.twitter.com/rRIgmKKq7G

— Laura Nadia Hunt (@LauraNadiaHunt) July 29, 2023

It's a true shame that it's taken this for the collective world to start to seriously assess her as an artist, I think over time she's going to be regarded as one of the actual greats. I hope she heard plenty of this when she was still alive.

Yeah just lots of small acts like this scattered throughout her life, all given to people who needed it the most. xp

Imagine if everyone within shouting distance of her level of fame, most of whom have more fortune, did such things just as often.

It's Rourke on bass.

Indeed.

That video brought tears to my eyes. She was such an electrifying performer. Whatever "it" is, she had it in abundance.

Sinead O'Connor's death is really hitting me and not just for the sadness of her tumultuous life on display for all to see.

My best friend Jennifer Miller introduced 'The Lion & The Cobra' to me when we were teenagers.

They are both gone now and I grieve for them both now.

I hear you. So many echoes with that time. I am feeling my age.

I think over time she's going to be regarded as one of the actual greats

100%.

had a vivid flash of recollection the other day when I saw this photo again

not sure of photographer (Mark Seliger i think?) but it was def circa 1992/1993 for the rolling stone

i did this really elaborate pen & ink project for year 12 art class, and made these 4ft tall handdrawn feathered angel wings with calligraphy over top (i think some Oscar Wilde poem idk) that i framed in like big wooden churchy-type frames

but i only just remembered that my entire inspiration for the texture & style of wings came from this photo of Sinead <3

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/21/a8/d6/21a8d6ba740a14f12bf36f991b3912ec.jpg

I think over time she's going to be regarded as one of the actual greats

100%.

At her best, she was untouchable.

Yeah, I also wasn't a fan of the Chrissie Hynde tribute, particularly "a mixture of joy and torture. A true artist" - the torture was a result of her doing something right and brave, and most of the rest of the world shitting on her, it wasn't an essential quality of her or anything.

what, are we tone policing Christie Hynde now? I thought she was full of love, who cares if a few of her views are dated.

otm please calm down

Sinead talks about the shoes she stole for her friend for the pretenders gig in her memoir, just read that bit this morning. I think Hynde's tribute was nice, certainly not as objectionable as Morrissey's (which was too self serving).

I'm just now listening to the reggae album which I had no idea even existed, wtf this is her third best release after the first two, so amazing.

wow thanks autocorrect for coining “Christie Hynde”.

I saw Buddy Guy last month (his farewell tour) and he talked about the time the governor of Louisiana promised him they’d honor him in some way. Guy’s response: “My mother told me, ‘if you’ve got flowers to give me, give them to me now while I can smell them, because I'm not going to smell them when they're on the casket.’” (They acted accordingly and Guy was able to see them rename La. 418 after him.) That came to mind when video of people literally putting flowers on a makeshift memorial for Sinead came up on my feed.

Bless her for dropping in Yellowman's "Nobody move, nobody get hurt" at the end of Emperor's New Clothes.

Finished the memoir, a few thoughts. The first two thirds are definitely more organized than the last third which she states, near the end of the book, is due to it being written after her hysterectomy which sounds like it may have been an unnecessary surgery with a botched care routine following. What that means for the book is that the first 2/3s are an essentially chronological examination of events and their impact in her art and life; and the last third is basically a series of vignettes plus some chapter length dissections of her last few records. Her writing is conversational through and never seems false or overthought; she is blunt, but her insights are certainly poetic in a sense. She appears entirely gracious , sometimes too hard on herself, and over all, honest. She definitely looks forward at the possible ramifications of her death (given that the ending followed an attempt). But she also sounded hopeful about the world as the pandemic was lifting. She clearly loved her children so much.

I learned a lot about her from reading it, I hope eveyone with a passing interest in her reads it too.

Agree with all of the above.

Two tributes I saw over the weekend that I really liked--

Walter Chaw: https://decider.com/2023/07/28/sinead-o-connor-butcher-boy/

(our own) glenn mcdonald: https://furia.com/newparticles/current.html

SINEAD O'CONNOR AND NEGATIVLAND: A U2 STORY
Back in the early 90s the story of the lawsuit against Negativland over our U2 EP, and the issues that lawsuit raised, only grew into a big and impactful news story when it broke nationally in the Washington Post and internationally in the London Times and Irish Times (and that's what led to it eventually becoming a big enough pain in the ass for the band U2, their manager, and record label, for them to actually start responding to us).

But to get that kind of coverage in those pre-internet days, how in heck could we ever manage to get the word out to mainstream media in the hope that they'd write about what was happening to us? Well, we'd need to have a really great mainstream media mailing list - the names and addresses of actual writers who might write about it so we could sent them our press releases. Being as underground as we were, a list like that was definitely something that Negativland did not have.

Enter Sinead O'Connor. Sometime in late 1991 we got a phone call (how did she get our number? We forgot to ask!) from Sinead O'Connor's assistant who told us that Sinead was following our saga, was appalled at what was happening to us, and wanted to help. Would we like a copy of her press list for the entire planet Earth? Hell, yes we would!! With all we had learned from our HELTER STUPID saga, we knew that a list like that was the missing piece to further our fight for the right to make art out of other people's intellectual property. Sinead's press list was sent to us and boy did we use it.
Of course this all came to mind for obvious and very sad reasons. Thank you, Sinead! Wherever you are now, if you are anywhere at all, we are grateful for your help and hope you are doing okay...

The obit I slapped together.

That was very moving, Alfred.

Yes--don't know if I commented at the time, but I loved your obit too, Alfred.

Re: the Best Sinead Covers post you followed the obit up with, the Cover Me blog posted a similar round-up that mentions a few you don't, including an ABBA cover I had no idea existed until now: https://www.covermesongs.com/2023/07/in-memoriam-sinead-oconnor.html

This is a nice little chat about music she had with the BBC in 2012.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b01kv7c7

Here's a clip that hasn't made the rounds much: Sinead singing a couple of songs at a local Bowie tribute a month after he died. She seems pretty happy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzhiwB1uC08

today i just wanted to say that "the emperor's new clothes" is the greatest song of all time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVV5FRER2lI

i wish stephan jenkins had not forgotten almost every lyric of the song (a song where every! lyric! is perfect!!!!) before performing it but that still made me happy this morning

Singing backup on one of Dusty Springfield's last TV performances:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htKms09CVJw

oh wow

today i just wanted to say that "the emperor's new clothes" is the greatest song of all time

― ivy., Tuesday, August 1, 2023

otm

still can't really bear to think about this

Yeah I'm just remembering MM as that's what I read, dunno if the NME poked "harmless" fun in her direction to the same degree. Did the mainstream press (UK) even acknowledge popular music at that point?

― Best regards, HM Revenue & Customs (Matt #2), Monday, June 7, 2021 3:47 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

NME was just as mean to her IIRC, there was so one particularly vile aside that was so appallingly hateful and unnecessary it made me mad for years thinking about it. O'Connor wasn't even the focus of the piece which was just some dumb filler article but this attack on her was just thrown in as a "hilarious" aside. Can't even remember what it was about now, the pointless mean-spiritedness of it just got to me.

I do however remember the writer responsible, Johnny "Cigarettes" Sharp. I sincerely hope he lies awake at night cringing at some of things he wrote when he was younger, it would only be fair.

The only weekly UK music paper that got behind The Lion And The Cobra was Record Mirror, who very much championed her. I remember this quite clearly, and having just checked the end-of-year albums lists for 1987, the album was indeed only listed by Record Mirror, and ignored by NM£/MM/Sounds.

That’s … wow.