Sinead O'Connor: C/D?

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