The world still isn’t ready for a woman like Sinéad O’Connor. This has become clear these past 24 hours, because for every thoughtful and respectful tribute to the adored Irish protest singer, there is a mean-spirited and reductive obituary that refers snidely to her mental health, her “failure” at mainstream musical success or her “self-sabotaging PR fiascos”.
To those of us whose lives she changed, Sinéad O’Connor failed at nothing. She wrote her own definition of success. And this is a much bolder, braver and more bruising path than aiming for someone else’s idea of success.
Especially when that definition of success belongs to a society she saw as intolerably flawed, and yet worth dedicating her life to trying to improve. Sinéad O’Connor also wrote her own perfect epitaph: “They tried to bury me. They didn’t realise I was a seed.”
I grew up in Belfast, and it’s hard to imagine what myself and my friends would be like without Sinéad O’Connor on our screens, in our magazines, in our hearts. She first reached us through MTV, staring piercingly and sincerely into the camera as she delivered the definitive 1990 cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U”.
In Just Seventeen magazine, I read that she shaved her head in response to a music exec suggesting she grow her short hair long, and adopt a “more feminine” image, to succeed in pop.
That was it, I was immediately in awe of this romantic rebel who was unafraid to subvert gender norms, this powerful yet vulnerable punk princess.
Nothing Compares 2 U music video, 1990
My friend Kathryn Ferguson directed the brilliant new documentary, Nothing Compares, a beautiful and furious feature film that questions how and why women who “stick their heads above the parapet” are silenced and ridiculed.
“She seemed to cut through all the noise and spoke directly to people in a very profound way,” Kathryn told me. “She inspired so many people to stand up for what’s right. I hope Nothing Compares is a reminder that collective activism works eventually.”
Sinéad O’Connor always regarded herself as a protest singer and activist, not a pop star. In October 1992, aged 25 and at the peak of her commercial success, she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on SNL after singing Bob Marley’s War, protesting against child sex abuse in the Catholic church.
The response, a systematic silencing, was ruthless and methodical, to a sinister degree. Madonna performed in the same show, mockingly ripping up a picture of Joey Buttafuoco, a cheap, craven and obviously bitter piss-take that put me off Madonna a bit.
Amidst the outcry surrounding SNL, when asked, “What effect do you think this will have on your career? Are you prepared for the consequences?” she replied, “Look at the alternative.”
Sinéad O'Connor on ripping up the Pope photo
These four words changed my life. As a young girl in 1990s Belfast, being politically engaged wasn’t a choice. Politics was in the air, the atmosphere heavy with violence and injustice and trauma, and there was no alternative but to try and do something about it. Sometimes I meet men, mostly white, mostly English or American men, who cheerfully tell me they don’t care about politics.
What a grotesque privilege it is, to not care about politics. “You’re a white financially privileged man working in a male-dominated industry,” I normally reply. “What would motivate you to care about politics, apart from compassion, empathy and an innate sense of justice?” Every time I protest political apathy, Sinéad O’Connor flashes through my mind, because she too, did not see apathy as an option.
Like Angela Davis, Greta Thunberg, Mikaela Loach and countless other women who inspire me today, Sinéad O’Connor was incapable of ignoring injustice. Apathy is a luxury that most people cannot afford.
During her 1990 tour of America, there was a furore after it was reported she’d requested that The Star-Spangled Banner not be played before her gigs. Frank Sinatra declared she should have her arse kicked; MC Hammer made a big song and dance about buying her a first-class ticket back to Ireland, protestors gathered outside her shows.
Eventually, she put on a wig and sunglasses and joined the mob, giving an interview pretending to be an outraged protestor from Saratoga. “I define success by whether I keep the contract I made with the Holy Spirit before I made one with the music business,” she writes. “I never signed anything that said I would be a good girl.”
“She was our generation’s Irish revolutionary, a true punk,” says my friend Róisín. “She transcended barriers, definitions, always standing up to power. She was as human as she was extraordinary. And her humanity was extraordinary, always motivated by love, in Irish, grá.”
Sinéad O’Connor did not find protest easy; she found it necessary. “There’s no way I’m gonna shut my mouth. I’m a battered child,” Sinéad once declared. She was born into a physically and emotionally abusive household, and due to “shoplifting and truancy” was sent to spend 18 months at Grianán Training Centre in Dublin, formerly a Magdalene asylum.
As Kathryn says, “Sinéad didn’t come from outer space; she was part of a system that was hugely broken and abusive from the top down.”
She was refreshingly honest about her abusive childhood, her mental health, her gloriously unconventional life, refusing to conform to gender-based societal norms in everything from her appearance to her family life.
“I have four children by four different fathers, only one of whom I married, and I married three other men, none of whom are the fathers of my children,” she writes, with characteristic wit and warmth, in her memoir, Rememberings.
Throughout her life, she excelled at wrestling back control of her own narrative, correcting the reductive journalism depicting her as a ranting and incoherent failed pop princess. “I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career, and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track,” is her own glorious description of that SNL protest in Rememberings.
When I was a child, Sinéad O’Connor seemed fearless, but as an adult I can see that this undervalues the human cost of her activism, the personal sacrifices she made by using her platform to promote progress. Her fragility is what permitted her to feel pain and injustice, and her feelings forced her to act fearlessly.
Working tirelessly to change a world that hurts you is the most generous act I can think of, and it’s this generosity that we will remember Sinéad O’Connor for, as much as her artistic genius.
Nothing Compares is available to stream on Sky and NOW TV from 29th July.
