FUUUUUUUCK.
#SineadOConnor was a hero. So sensitive, so fierce, so tender, a warrior wounded by abuse. She fought for anti-racism, women, kids - got bludgeoned for it, kept getting back up to do it again.
"Brash & outspoken...a direct challenge to popular culture's long-prevailing notions of femininity & sexuality – O'Connor changed the image of women in music in the early 1990s."
"Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I am a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest" RIP
The Lion & the Cobra hit us like a bomb, we played it constantly
#Sinead:
Maybe I was mean
But I really don't think so
You asked if I'm scared
And I said so
Everyone can see what's going on
They laugh 'cause they know they're untouchable
Not because what I said was wrong
Whatever it may bring
I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace
Maybe it sounds mean
But I really don't think so
You asked for the truth and I told you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VVVRHDrzNM
Fuck the Catholic Church & all its minions for trying to shame & silence her for telling the truth about their abuse.
Fuck the Thatcherites & Reaganites of all eras for using racism to amass power, & dogwhistles to let people hide their racism.
Fuck the British Empire & colonial power.
Fuck the patriarchs for telling women like her to be silent.
Fuck the abusers for using the wounds they caused in the abused, to marginalize them.
Sinead O'Connor was a genius, but much, much more importantly - a truthteller. I'm grateful for her voice.
"England's not the mythical land of Madame George & roses
It's the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds" [1989]
Peace & healing to her family who suffered so much loss this year.
Colonialism bears a long tail of pain that keeps lashing.
The Late Show 1990.
After her powerful rendition of Marley's anti-white supremacist "War" on SNL, #SineadOConnor warned of the Catholic Church's sexual abuse of children, tearing up a photo of the Pope.
Lorne Michaels turned off the "applause" sign. Madonna mocked her by tearing up a photo of Joey Buttafuoco. NBC banned her. But #SineadWasRight
In 2021, she had no regrets. "I'm not sorry I did it...But it was very traumatizing. It was open season on treating me like a crazy b-tch."
(Changed 'title' to try & save it from deletion by uToon..fyi? Dec.1st. '19)She knew that this ;,SNL; & the 'live' performance she was 'booed' into! at an MT...
#OConnor was a punk, and 1980s girls like us loved her for it. For example, when a record executive advised her to appear more feminine, she shaved her head.
"She also used her platform to speak out on issues ranging from human rights to Irish politics to mental health, even when doing so jeopardized her career."
More like #SineadOConnor, please.
#SineadOConnor was a powerful artist, with an equally powerful humanity. Her stubborn refusal to lose that over the years, was beautiful to see.
Today I feel swamped with grief for everything we will never get to hear her say or sing. We lost a real warrior, who gave much of herself.
She deserves every bit of praise she got for #NothingComparesToYou, but #Troy is, I think, one of the most magnificent & potent songs ever written: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oTiAsFNI9o
Provided to YouTube by Reservoir Media Management, Inc.Troy · Sinéad O'ConnorLion and the Cobra℗ Chrysalis Records LimitedReleased on: 1987-11-04Artist: Siné...
#SineadOConnor was so brave. I think part of what I responded to so strongly as a teen was that her voice somehow carried in it, the weight of Irish history of colonization, patriarchal abuse, & genocide - and the generational familial abuse that accompanies the trauma of all of those things. She fought back against all of it, in her own life and beyond.
https://progressives.social/@memory@blank.org/110782135918188054
Attached: 1 image Also, a detail about O’Connor's SNL appearance that I only just now learned. The woman was hard as nails.
"It is striking that the music industry could tolerate Johnny Rotten, Bob Geldof or Morrissey being forceful in their views but, God forbid, a woman could express such opinions.
The price O'Connor paid was being frozen out of the mainstream which vilified her for exercising her right to free speech"
loveitinpomona.blogspot.com/2022/11/primal-scream-nothing-compares.html
Nice background on Ireland & the major influence #SineadOConnor wielded in transforming it: https://progressives.social/@Voline@kolektiva.social/110783008980766018
I think it’s difficult for us in North America to appreciate how contrary, rebellious, and frankly prophetic Sinéad O’Connor was in an Irish context. I lived there briefly in 1985, and so saw a bit of the place and time she was from. It was a bit of a culture shock. I was 19 and not in school. I got a work permit and flew over to Dublin. I only spoke English at the time so it was kind of a toss up between London and Dublin. I didn’t think there’d be much of a difference it was all “Western Europe” as far as I was concerned — Denmark, France, Ireland, … all pretty similar right? Hahahaha. Unlike today, Ireland in 1985 was a poor country. Deprivation had forced generations of people to emigrate to seek a better life. There were 4 million people in the Republic, but in 1845 there had been 8 million. The only country in Europe whose population declined over that period. 1995 was the first time in 300 years Ireland did not have negative net migration. And it was pious. Sinéad called it “a theocracy”. There were no state schools. All education was in the hands of religious schools — overwhelmingly Catholic. Two years before, in 1983, the Republic had put a ban on abortion into their constitution. Condoms were illegal when I got there. In 1980 Bob Geldof had summed up his home town as “police and priests”. It seemed a bit more patriarchal than the US in the Reagan years. But I didn’t know the half of it. It wasn’t until years later that I learned about the Magdalene Laundries where “troubled” girls were imprisoned in workhouses operated by orders of nuns, the Mother and Baby homes where women who were pregnant out of wedlock were kept out of sight to have their babies in secret, who were then taken from them and sold to American Catholic couples — and underneath it all the decades-long, quietly suppressed crime of the clergy sexually abusing boys and girls. This stuff was not talked about in 1980s Ireland. But Sinéad did. She would not shut up. She would not stay in her place. She made original, passionate music. But if you think she caused an uproar in the US when she tore up a photo of the Pope on SNL in 1992 … well, in Ireland it was more of what she already was known for. It was only later, in the late 1990 and 2000s that the scandals broke, and everyone could see that the crazy woman who would not shut up was right. She had been right all along. The 2022 biographical film Nothing Compares is good. If you want to get the flavor of what she means to people in Ireland, go scroll through the expressions of grief pouring out on mastodon.ie The woman was a giant. #Sinead #SineadOConnor
P.S. Re 1992 tearing up of her abusive mother's photo of the Pope.
My mom grew up Irish Catholic in Boston. She'd told me about priests abusing kids in her parish, years before, in the 1980s. I knew. We knew. The Catholics who called NBC to get Sinead "cancelled"? They knew she was telling the truth.
As Sinead prophetically wrote in The Emperor's New Clothes,
"Everyone can see what's going on
They laugh 'cause they know they're untouchable
Not because what I said was wrong" #SineadWasRight
She was a truth-teller and abusers don't like truth tellers. Even enablers don't like them because they demand change.
This piece talks about the original couplet from a poem that has bloomed in the context of many fights for justice. Very appropriate for her life:
“What didn't you do to bury me/But you forgot that I was a seed.”
After the Families Belong Together protests this past weekend, we talk to Greek media scholar Alexandra Boutopoulou on the widely used phrase, "They tried to bury us, they didn't know we were seeds," and its poetic origins.
I just bought an audio copy of it (she is the reader). I will buy a hard copy from Powells next week because we happen to be making a trip to Portland. That and #WhatsUpWhiteWomen!
@chargrille when I saw she had died, "she was right," was the first thing that went through my head.
Revisiting her music today after a looong time away brings back all the fierce teenage emotion she resonated with in me.
Yet as a 50 year old so, so weary of misogyny and injustice and institutions lying to protect the abusers in their ranks, I now understand her lyrics so much more than I did then.
I hope she's found the peace she deserves.
Erin Conroy
Kikus
Andrew C. White
Terry Money
Chris Lombardi
Definitely Doc D