Rebel, mother, priest, artist, enthusiast of the number two blade – Sinead O’Connor is one of the most iconic musical figures to emerge from Ireland in the past three decades, writes Stephanie Lord.
Pop music was militant in the 1980s and it was an era where kids had opinions on Thatcher because political anthems were normalised. Sinead O’Connor emerged in an era of activist artists who had something to say, and regardless of whether you agreed with her or not, she has always had the courage of her convictions.
It isn’t every Irish artist that would liken U2 to ‘terrorists’ for releasing their music through iTunes in a way that meant it took up valuable megabytes whether you wanted it or not, and she once said MTV should be abolished because television had killed art and free thinking.
She is still probably best known for once tearing up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1992 in response to the Catholic church’s handling of child sex abuse cases, and the video for her haunting rendition of the Prince song Nothing Compares 2U in which her childlike face cries to the camera in a feat of raw emotion and vulnerability.
Born in 1966, Sinead had a difficult upbringing, with her parents going their separate ways when she was a child in the seventies, and after suffering abuse at the hands of her mother, she was sent to a Magdalene institution before joining the band Ton Ton Macoute and then becoming a solo artist.
Having spoken about the horror of being in an institution, she also pointed out that it was a nun who had encouraged her to pursue her musical interests. Famed for her emotional performances and controversial media appearances, Sinead has lived her life in the public eye since she entered the stage since her first album The Lion and the Cobra was released to critical acclaim in 1987, drawing attention to social injustices and singing about Ireland, nationality, Catholicism and motherhood.
Last year Sinead appeared again in news headlines when she went on a bike ride in Chicago and didn’t arrive home in the aftermath of some concerning Facebook posts. She was later found safe but still faced derision over the episode, despite her sporadic public admissions over the years of mental health issues and occasional bouts of suicidal ideation and hospitalisation. As we write this she is in New York and has, again, spoken of suicide…
The vilification she has faced as a result of her mental health status throughout the years does not reflect the thousands of people who take to the roads to fundraise each year for Pieta House. The critics who round on her for regularly posting the intimate details of her love life, marriage status and emotional wellbeing on Facebook would have you believe that this is a new initiative with social media facilitating a woman given to oversharing.
In fact, Sinead O’Connor once took out a full-page ad in the Irish Times in the early 1990s after she missed a gig stating that she needed time to explore her grief about her childhood. Filling the public in on the details of her life was something this trailblazing artist was doing before Facebook was a glint in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye.
Not being inclined towards labels of any nature, Sinead prefers not to call herself a feminist, but in many ways she has been one of the most easily identifiable feminist artists having stated 20 years ago that the reason she shaved her head in the first place was because her record company wanted her to appear more feminine.
She became pregnant during the recording of her first album, which by that stage had cost the label £120,000 to produce, leading them to attempt to convince Sinead to end the pregnancy so that they’d get value for money out of her. Furious, she refused. She would never be beholden to what managers and producers wanted her to do.
In later years she boycotted the Grammys because of the Gulf War and donated the money from her EP My Special Child to the International Red Cross Kurdish Relief programme and announced her support for the IRA in 1989, but retracted it a year later.
Later she was ordained as a priest in a Catholic sect, misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, and more recently accused American comedian Arsenio Hall of spiking her marijuana and supplying the drugs that killed Prince, an allegation which resulted in a threat of legal action from Hall. Not one to be lectured, O’Connor told him where to go. Her detractors should know by now that it would take more than that to keep her quiet.
In 2013, Sinead published an open letter to singer Miley Cyrus warning her about the treatment of women in the music industry, that women should not be valued just for their sexuality and encouraged her to send what she believed were healthier messages to her peers.
This was the first of four open letters from Sinead to Miley that then attracted the attention of musician Amanda Palmer who joined in with her own open letter, and regardless of where you stand on the validity of Sinead’s criticisms of hypersexualised performances, it’s clear that she was initially genuinely concerned for the trajectory of Miley’s behaviour.
The best-selling Irish artist has been on the receiving end of criticism from other women artists herself, and she once complained that Madonna had said that she was ‘as sexy as a Venetian blind.’ Relations between the two musical artists soon soured when the former Disney star referred to O’Connor as ‘crazy’ in an interview after the well-meaning letter, which led to Sinead calling for an apology over use of the term.
Her career hit a rocky patch in the 1990s and more attention was paid to her private life and musical output. A drawn-out custody battle between Sinead and her ex-partner – noted conservative columnist who campaigned against Marriage Equality – John Waters, over their daughter Roisin resulted initially in her allowing the girl to live with her dad. She subsequently took her daughter to London amid claims about her parenting skills from Waters.
Relations between the former couple remain cordial, however, as in 2015 during the course of the Marriage Equality referendum Sinead wrote an open letter to Waters in which she pleaded with him to look at his own daughter as an example of how well a child could do outside of the traditional family unit that he was campaigning in favour of.
After almost 30 years of a career, Sinead O’Connor has released ten albums, six of which went platinum or gold, won seven Grammys and a Golden Globe among a plethora of other awards, and she is clearly a woman that has talent in abundance, as well as strong opinions. With those attributes, it’s no wonder she’s scared the establishment on more than one occasion.
Words: Stephanie Lord