O’Connor, Sinead

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    Kris Kristofferson Stood by Sinead O’Connor as the Boos Rained Down

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    At a moment when the Irish singer had few people defending her, the country music veteran showed strong support. It created a bond that remained throughout their lives.On Oct. 16, 1992, Columbia Records threw its longtime artist Bob Dylan an event at Madison Square Garden to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his first album with the label. The concert, available on pay-per-view, featured performances by Dylan along with some of the biggest stars of his era, among them Stevie Wonder, George Harrison, Johnny Cash and Eric Clapton.But it was the performance by the comparative newcomer Sinead O’Connor and the assist lent her by the country veteran Kris Kristofferson, who died Saturday at 88, that proved most memorable.O’Connor, then just 25, was at the center of a firestorm. Just two weeks earlier, the Irish singer was the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” when, at the conclusion of her second and final performance of the evening, she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II and exhorted, “Fight the real enemy,” a defiant act of protest against sexual abuse in the Catholic Church (and also, she later revealed, a deeply personal statement — the photograph had belonged to her mother, who had physically abused her). The incident drew widespread outrage and turned O’Connor into a cultural pariah.Now, in the wake of that polarizing moment, it was Kristofferson who was tasked with bringing O’Connor to the stage.“I’m real proud to introduce this next artist, whose name’s become synonymous with courage and integrity,” Kristofferson said, in obvious reference to the “S.N.L.” incident. (As he would later sing of O’Connor, “She told them her truth just as hard as she could/Her message profoundly was misunderstood.”)O’Connor took the stage to a cascade of applause and boos, which did not let up as O’Connor stood silently at the microphone with her hands behind her back. A minute passed, and Kristofferson re-emerged from stage left, put his arm around O’Connor and whispered something in her ear.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sinead O’Connor Died of Pulmonary Disease and Asthma, Death Report Says

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      A death certificate filed last week revealed the natural causes behind the death last July of Ms. O’Connor, the Irish singer and activist.Sinead O’Connor, the Irish singer who shot to fame in the 1980s and ’90s and was known for her activism, died at age 56 last July of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchial asthma, according to her death certificate.In January, a coroner in London said that Ms. O’Connor had died of “natural causes” but did not provide details. The police said at the time of Ms. O’Connor’s death that it was “not being treated as suspicious.”Ms. O’Connor’s death certificate, which was registered last week, filled in some gaps. The singer died of “exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchial asthma together with low-grade lower respiratory-tract infection,” the report said. It was submitted by John Reynolds, Ms. O’Connor’s first husband.Ms. O’Connor become a global star in the 1990s with a cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” The album the song was on won a Grammy Award in 1991 for best alternative music performance.She also wielded her fame as an activist, speaking out against sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, misogyny, the British subjugation of Ireland and other issues. In her later life, she spoke about her mental struggles and her recovery from child abuse.Ms. O’Connor’s death shook Ireland, which mourned her as a national treasure even though she had been a controversial figure for her political provocations onstage and off. In 1992, Ms. O’Connor tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II during a “Saturday Night Live” performance to protest sexual abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church.In the year since she died, debates have continued over Ms. O’Connor’s legacy and representation.In March, a risqué performance honoring her life and her first studio album opened in London and drew crowds in New York. And last week, a wax museum in Dublin removed a figure of her after her brother said it was “hideous” and “looked nothing like her.”“She was something grander than a simple pop star,” Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The New York Times, wrote in an appraisal of Ms. O’Connor’s career.“She became a stand-in for a sociopolitical discomfort that was beginning to take hold in the early 1990s,” he continued, “a rejection of the enthusiastic sheen and power-at-all-costs culture of the 1980s.” More

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      A Risqué Tribute to Sinead O’Connor Arrives

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      Since Sinead O’Connor died last summer at 56, the outspoken and defiant Irish singer-songwriter has been memorialized on stages both divey and grand, including a star-studded concert last week at Carnegie Hall. But no tribute was likely as nude as the one on Monday, when the performance artist Christeene brought her pantsless queer horrorcore act — and a faithful downtown demimonde — to City Winery on the West Side of Manhattan.In celebrating “a very powerful woman,” Christeene said onstage, “I think we need to understand the dangers of religion, and the importance of ritual.” She arrived in a scuffed-up red robe, flanked by two dancers in white papal hats, and then shed it all to reveal a triangle of fabric across her nether region; costume changes brought a series of sheer, one-shouldered unitards — Skims from another dimension.Traversing a stage decorated with crinkled sheets and cones of aluminum foil, in high-heeled black boots, she had the energetic strut of Iggy Pop and the evocative, funny monologues — about faith, protest and community — of an oracle. From the very first song, the audience was intensely rapt.The guest vocalists Peaches and Justin Vivian Bond joined Christeene to celebrate “The Lion and the Cobra,” Sinead O’Connor’s 1987 studio debut.With the guest vocalists Peaches and Justin Vivian Bond, the show, titled “The Lion, the Witch and the Cobra,” commemorated the first studio album that O’Connor released (“The Lion and the Cobra,” in 1987). Recorded while O’Connor was pregnant with her first child, with her voice lilting and strong, she took its name from a psalm, and appeared on its cover with a shaved head. The LP didn’t include any of her biggest tracks, but songs like “Jerusalem” seem prescient in uniting bodily rage and vulnerability to place and history. On Monday, in the wake of a lunar eclipse, Christeene told the near-capacity crowd that it was going to be a witchy night.Christeene is an alter ego of the Louisiana-born artist Paul Soileau, 47, who devised the character while working at a Texas Starbucks, and went on to make fans like the fashion designer Rick Owens and the influential musician Karin Dreijer of the Knife and Fever Ray, playing for years in an underground scene that blasted convention, including mainstream gay culture. In a dirty blond or black wig, streaky striped face paint and pool-blue eyes with an electric alien look (courtesy of contacts), Christeene has been variously described as a “drag terrorist” (her own term), Divine by way of G.G. Allin, full-blast Tina Turner pitched to Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, and “Beyoncé on bath salts.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominees Include Cher, Mariah Carey and More

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      Oasis and Sade will appear on the ballot for the first time, alongside Dave Matthews Band, A Tribe Called Quest, Mary J. Blige and others.Cher, Mariah Carey, Sinead O’Connor, Oasis and Sade are among the first-time nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 2024, which were revealed Saturday.Other new names on the hall’s short list include Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Kool & the Gang and Lenny Kravitz. Also on the list are Dave Matthews Band, Mary J. Blige, Jane’s Addiction, A Tribe Called Quest and Eric B. & Rakim, each of whom has been nominated at least once before. Ozzy Osbourne, who is already part of the pantheon as a member of Black Sabbath, has gotten the nod as a solo artist for the first time.“This remarkable list of nominees reflects the diverse artists and music that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honors and celebrates,” John Sykes, the chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said in a statement. “Continuing in the true spirit of rock ’n’ roll, these artists have created their own sounds that have impacted generations and influenced countless others that have followed in their footsteps.”The 15 cited artists are the first batch of nominees since the abrupt departure last year of Jann Wenner, the Rolling Stone editor and co-founder of the Rock Hall, who had long held a powerful sway over the awards process.In September, Wenner was ejected from the hall’s governing board just one day after the publication of an interview in The New York Times in which he justified the subjects for his interview collection “The Masters” — all of them white and male — with comments that were widely condemned as racist and misogynistic. Female artists like Joni Mitchell, he said, were not “philosophers of rock,” and Black performers like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye “just didn’t articulate at that level.”It is also a little more than a year after Jon Landau, the former Rolling Stone critic who became Bruce Springsteen’s producer and manager, stepped down from his longtime perch as the chairman of the hall’s deliberately secretive nominating committee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Annie Lennox Honors Sinead O’Connor at Grammys

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      In an emotional ode to Sinead O’Connor at the Grammys, Annie Lennox performed “Nothing Compares 2 U,” the Irish singer-songwriter’s cover of the Prince original that became a No. 1 hit.A forceful performer known for her lilting voice and her political provocations, O’Connor died in July at 56. Her rendition of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” her best-known track, highlighted her ability to veer from breathy high notes to penetrating, heavy vocals, delivering performances with an emotional gut punch.There was a bit of irony in Lennox’s performance: In 1991, the year that O’Connor won the Grammy for best alternative music performance — for the album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” which featured “Nothing Compares 2 U” — she boycotted the ceremony over what she called the show’s excessive commercialism.In a fitting tribute, Lennox took a moment at the end of her performance for an antiwar statement, saying, “Artists for cease-fire,” in reference to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.O’Connor had a tendency of turning public performances into headlines, famously ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II on “S.N.L.” in protest of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. As Amanda Hess wrote in a 2021 profile of O’Connor, the act was more personal than it may have seemed. Her mother, who the singer said in her memoir had physically abused her, died when O’Connor was 18. It was her mother’s photo, plucked from a bedroom wall, that O’Connor destroyed on national television.“I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” she said. “But it was very traumatizing.” Her career never recovered, but she felt a sense of freedom. “I could just be me,” she wrote in her book, “Rememberings.” “I’m not a pop star. I’m just a troubled soul who needs to scream into mikes now and then.”In the days and months following O’Connor’s death, which a coroner later said was the result of natural causes, scores of artists spoke of her bravery and pure talent.Lennox, a Scottish singer-songwriter who started her own solo career around the time of O’Connor’s rise, posted to social media a moving tribute to the singer after she died, calling her raw, fierce and brilliant. More

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      Sinead O’Connor Died of Natural Causes, Coroner Says

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      The Irish singer-songwriter, known for her powerful, evocative voice, died at 56 at a residence in London in July.A London coroner’s office said Tuesday that the Irish singer Sinead O’Connor died from natural causes.Ms. O’Connor, 56, was found dead at a residential property in London in July. Shortly afterward, the local coroner announced they would conduct an autopsy of her body. In a brief statement on Tuesday, the coroner said that “Ms. O’Connor died of natural causes.” The coroner said they had “therefore ceased their involvement in her death.” No further details were given about the cause of death.Best known for her rendition of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Ms. O’Connor became a global star in the 1990s — not just for her music, but for her political provocations, on- and offstage. Most memorably, Ms. O’Connor tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II during a 1992 “Saturday Night Live” performance to protest child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.In an appraisal of Ms. O’Connor’s career for The New York Times, the pop critic Jon Caramanica said the singer “was something grander than a simple pop star.”She “was a fervent moralist, an uncompromised voice of social progress and someone who found stardom, and its sandpapered and glossed boundaries, to be a kind of sickness,” Mr. Caramanica wrote. “She was also a singer of ferocious gifts,” he added. More

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      A Playlist to Remember the Musicians We Lost in 2023

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      A playlist honoring David Crosby, Wayne Shorter, Sinead O’Connor, Jimmy Buffett and other musicians who died this year.David Crosby, a founding member of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, died in January.Sulfiati Magnuson/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Doesn’t it seem like the “In Memoriam” segments on awards shows get longer with each passing year? It can sometimes feel like we’re in a perpetual state of mourning, saying goodbye to one brilliant musician after the next. Social media, the 24-hour news cycle and an aging population of era-defining artists all contribute to the perception that we’re constantly suffering huge losses.Even by that light, 2023 was a year of exceptional grief in the music world. We bid farewell to some absolute titans (Harry Belafonte, Tina Turner, Tony Bennett), countercultural icons (David Crosby, Robbie Robertson, Jeff Beck), and beloved rebels (Sinead O’Connor, Tom Verlaine, Shane MacGowan), among many others.For today’s newsletter — the final Amplifier of 2023 — I thought it would be fitting to compile my own “In Memoriam” segment, in the form of a playlist honoring those we lost throughout the year. It’s an eclectic collection in terms of genre, generation and geography; Japanese electro-pop legends sit alongside American jazz greats and Canadian folk revivalists. This may be cold comfort, but we’ll take any silver lining we can get: The magnitude of those we lost this year means this is a very, very good playlist.Like any “In Memoriam” tribute, this one inevitably omits a few names. But I hope it honors some of the musicians who meant something to you and that it introduces a few unfamiliar artists whose discographies are ripe for posthumous discovery.One programming note: As I mentioned, this is the last Amplifier of the year, as we’re taking a one-week break over the holidays. We’ll be back the first week of January with a roundup of the best older songs you discovered in 2023. I’m loving all the submissions we’ve received so far; keep them coming! We may use your response in an upcoming edition of The Amplifier.As ever, thanks to each and every one of you for reading and listening this year. Happy 2024.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Jeff Beck: “Over the Rainbow”Let’s start off with a classic, reimagined as a soaring, wordless aria by the guitar legend Jeff Beck, who died on Jan. 10 at 78. “For all his speed and dexterity,” my colleague Jon Pareles wrote in an appreciation of this performance, “Beck never underestimated the beauty of a sustained melody.” (Listen on YouTube)2. David Crosby: “Laughing”On Jan. 19, the world lost the irascible, angel-voiced David Crosby, who defined the sound of folk-rock in the 1960s and ’70s as a founding member of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I’m a fan of his meanderingly beautiful 1971 solo album “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” and this track in particular. I also count myself absurdly lucky to have interviewed Crosby over the phone about a year and a half before he died; he called beforehand to ask if he could push back our conversation a few minutes because his hotel breakfast had just arrived. I said of course, and he called back maybe half an hour later, still grateful, easefully friendly and very forthcoming. Rest in peace to a man who appreciated a good breakfast. (Listen on YouTube)3. Television: “See No Evil”There’s a rare pantheon of records that, regardless of passing trends, will always sound effortlessly and undeniably cool to each new generation that discovers them. Television’s “Marquee Moon” is one of those albums, in large part because of the frontman Tom Verlaine, who died on Jan. 28 at 73. As a guitarist, Verlaine had chops to spare, but it took a certain attitude — heard on this leadoff track of “Marquee Moon” — to make virtuosity sound punk. (Listen on YouTube)4. Dusty Springfield: “(They Long to Be) Close to You”Burt Bacharach, who died on Feb. 8 at age 94, wrote a seemingly infinite number of perfect pop songs, like this one that the Carpenters made a No. 1 smash in 1970. Dusty Springfield’s earlier version, recorded in 1964, isn’t as well known, but it’s every bit as stirring, thanks in large part to the emotional acuity of Bacharach’s timeless composition. (Listen on YouTube)5. Wayne Shorter: “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum”Until his death on March 2 at 89, the saxophonist Wayne Shorter was considered by many to be the greatest living jazz composer. His singular, expressive playing on this highlight from his 1966 album, “Speak No Evil,” is one of many recordings that suggest why. (Listen on YouTube)6. Yellow Magic Orchestra: “Technopolis”The pioneering Japanese electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra lost two of its three principal members this year: the drummer and vocalist Yukihiro Takahashi on Jan. 11 and, a little over two months later, the keyboardist Ryuichi Sakamoto. Both had long and varied solo careers as well, but their work in Y.M.O., like on this leadoff track from the 1979 album “Solid State Survivor,” is still enduringly influential and instantly recognizable. (Listen on YouTube)7. Harry Belafonte: “Jamaica Farewell”“Calypso,” the blockbuster 1956 release by the Jamaican American singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte, helped bring Caribbean sounds to the masses: It is said to be the first LP by a solo artist to sell over a million copies. This wistful West Indian folk tune was the album’s lead single, and it long remained a signature song for Belafonte, who died on April 25 at 96. (Listen on YouTube)8. Gordon Lightfoot: “Sundown”The Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, who died on May 1 at 84, was a familiar presence on AM radio in the early 1970s, when he scored hit after unlikely hit. None charted higher than the infectious “Sundown,” the title track off his 1974 album and his only song to hit No. 1 in the United States. The track’s buoyant rhythm and lush harmonies contrast with its lyrical preoccupation with jealousy, inebriation and mistrust, creating an alluringly dark pop song. (Listen on YouTube)9. Tina Turner: “What’s Love Got to Do With It”Talk about a comeback. The mighty Tina Turner hadn’t had a Top 10 hit in the U.S. in more than a decade when in 1984 she returned with a vengeance, belting out this anthem and strutting down the streets of New York in its unforgettable music video. “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” released when Turner was 44, was her long-awaited liberation, and the force of her vocal delivery tells you how much life — and rock-star attitude — she had in her. She died May 24 at 83. (Listen on YouTube)10. Astrud Gilberto: “Berimbau”The 83-year-old Brazilian bossa nova singer Astrud Gilberto, who died on June 5, was best known as the serenely stylish vocalist who sang Stan Getz’s “The Girl From Ipanema.” But her discography is full of other treasures, like her lovely 1966 album of songs arranged by Gil Evans, “Look to the Rainbow,” on which this elegant, atmospheric track named for a one-stringed Brazilian instrument appears. (Listen on YouTube)11. The Band: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”Robbie Robertson’s music had an almost eerie way of fusing the past and the present, creating compositions that sound at once rooted and untethered to linear time. This song — a Canadian musician’s evocation of Civil War-era America, with a little help from his then-Bandmate, the Arkansas-born Levon Helm — is an ambiguous document, still sparking fresh debate more than 50 years after its release. But above all it is a testament to the slippery songwriting power of Robertson, who died on Aug. 9 at 80. (Listen on YouTube)12. Jane Birkin: “Jane B.”The iconic Jane Birkin — perhaps the most quintessentially French person ever to be born outside of France — was so much more than just the namesake of a coveted Hermès bag. As a musician, too, she was more than just a coquettish co-conspirator with her onetime husband Serge Gainsbourg; she forged a long solo career that continued after they split in 1980. This orchestral, Chopin-inspired ballad is from one of their greatest collaborations, the 1969 album “Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg,” but here it’s Birkin, who died on July 16 at 76, who takes the lead. (Listen on YouTube)13. Tony Bennett: “(I Left My Heart) In San Francisco”Tony Bennett was a New Yorker through and through, but for the three-minute span of this classic, you could have sworn he was a Frisco kid. Bennett, who died on July 21 at 96, showed off both the crystalline purity of his voice and his ample lung power on the song that became his most recognizable standard. (Listen on YouTube)14. Sinead O’Connor: “Black Boys on Mopeds”On July 26, music lost one of its great and most uncompromising truth tellers. The piercing voice, moral courage and fierce compassion of Sinead O’Connor are all front and center on this acoustic ballad from her second album, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” a track as devastatingly relevant today as it was when she wrote it in 1990. (Listen on YouTube)15. Rodriguez: “Crucify Your Mind”The final decade of the folk singer Sixto Rodriguez’s life was a prolonged and deserved victory lap, thanks to the Oscar-winning 2012 documentary “Searching for Sugar Man,” which introduced his once-obscure music to a whole new audience. His performance of this song on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” 42 years after its release, still haunts me. (Listen on YouTube)16. Jimmy Buffett: “A Pirate Looks at Forty”The Mayor of Margaritaville left us on Sept. 1 at 76. Though best known for his party anthems, this meditation on mortality, “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” proves that Buffet was no stranger to the introspective ballad — albeit one seasoned with his own special salt. (Listen on YouTube)17. The Isley Brothers: “Livin’ in the Life”Though his brother Ronald usually sang lead, Rudolph Isley, who died on Oct. 11 at 84, provides a memorable assist on this sublimely funky single from their group’s 1977 album “Go for Your Guns.” (Listen on YouTube)18. The Pogues: “If I Should Fall From Grace With God”Music lost one of its most cantankerous poets on Nov. 30, when Shane MacGowan, the lead singer and songwriter of the Celtic punk band the Pogues, died at 65. This defiantly rousing title track from the band’s 1988 album should serve as an appropriately unsentimental requiem: “If I’m buried ’neath the sod, but the angels won’t receive me/Let me go, boys/Let me go, boys/Let me go down in the mud where the rivers all run dry.” (Listen on YouTube)To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“In Memoriam: Musicians We Lost in 2023” track listTrack 1: Jeff Beck, “Over the Rainbow”Track 2: David Crosby, “Laughing”Track 3: Television, “See No Evil”Track 4: Dusty Springfield, “(They Long to Be) Close to You”Track 5: Wayne Shorter, “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum”Track 6: Yellow Magic Orchestra, “Technopolis”Track 7: Harry Belafonte, “Jamaica Farewell”Track 8: Gordon Lightfoot, “Sundown”Track 9: Tina Turner, “What’s Love Got to Do with It”Track 10: Astrud Gilberto, “Berimbau”Track 11: The Band, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”Track 12: Jane Birkin, “Jane B.”Track 13: Tony Bennett, “(I Left My Heart) In San Francisco”Track 14: Sinead O’Connor, “Black Boys on Mopeds”Track 15: Rodriguez, “Crucify Your Mind”Track 16: Jimmy Buffett, “A Pirate Looks at Forty”Track 17: The Isley Brothers, “Livin’ in the Life”Track 18: The Pogues, “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” More

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      The Artists We Lost in 2023, in Their Words

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      The many creative people who died this year built their wisdom over lives generously long or much too short, through times of peace and periods of conflict. Their ideas, perspectives and humanity helped shape our own: in language spoken, written or left unsaid; in notes hit, lines delivered, boundaries pushed. Here is a tribute to just some of them, in their voices.“I never considered giving up on my dreams. You could say I had an invincible optimism.”— Tina Turner, musician, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)“Hang on to your fantasies, whatever they are and however dimly you may hear them, because that’s what you’re worth.”— David Del Tredici, composer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“Ever since I can remember, I have danced for the sheer joy of moving.”— Rena Gluck, dancer and choreographer, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“The stage is not magic for me. It never was. I always felt the audience was waiting to see that first drop of blood.”— Lynn Seymour, dancer, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Paul Reubens.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“Most questions that are asked of me about Pee-wee Herman I don’t have a clue on. I’ve always been very careful not to dissect it too much for myself.”— Paul Reubens, actor, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“If you know your voice really well, if you’ve become friends with your vocal apparatus, you know which roles you can sing and which you shouldn’t even touch.”— Grace Bumbry, opera singer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“Actors should approach an audition (and indeed, their careers) with the firm belief that they have something to offer that is unique. Treasure who you are and what you bring to the audition.”— Joanna Merlin, actress, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Glenda Jackson.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“If I have my health and strength, I’m going to be the most appalling old lady. I’m going to boss everyone about, make people stand up for me when I come into a room, and generally capitalize on all the hypocrisy that society shows towards the old.”— Glenda Jackson, actress and politician, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t see myself as a pioneer. I see myself as a working guy and that’s all, and that is enough.”— William Friedkin, filmmaker, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)“Some people, every day you get up and chop wood, and some people write songs.”— Robbie Robertson, musician, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“I wasn’t brought up in Hollywood. I was brought up in a kibbutz.”— Topol, actor, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Jimmy Buffett.Michael Putland/Getty Images“I don’t play at my audience. I play for my audience.”— Jimmy Buffett, musician, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)“I’m still not a natural in front of people. I’m shy. I’m a hermit. But I’m learning a little more.”— Andre Braugher, actor, born 1962 (Read the obituary.)“Some poets do not see reaching many in spatial terms, as in the filled auditorium. They see reaching many temporally, sequentially, many over time, into the future, but in some profound way these readers always come singly, one by one.”— Louise Glück, poet, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“I paint because I believe it’s the best way that I can pass my time as a human being. I paint for myself. I paint for my wife. And I paint for anybody that’s willing to look at it.”— Brice Marden, artist, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“Writing is about generosity, passing on to other people what you’ve had the misfortune of having to find out for yourself.”— Fay Weldon, author, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Ryuichi Sakamoto.Ian Dickson/Redferns, via Getty Images“I went to see one of those pianos drowned in tsunami water near Fukushima, and recorded it. Of course, it was totally out of tune, but I thought it was beautiful. I thought, ‘Nature tuned it.’”— Ryuichi Sakamoto, composer, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“I hate everything that is natural, and I love the artificial.”— Vera Molnar, artist, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)“A roof could be a roof, but it also could be a little garden.”— Rafael Viñoly, architect, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“True architecture is life.”— Balkrishna Doshi, architect, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)Sinead O’Connor.Duane Braley/Star Tribune, via Getty Images“Words are dreadfully powerful, and words uttered are 10 times more powerful. The spoken word is the science on which the entire universe is built.”— Sinead O’Connor, musician, born 1966 (Read the obituary.)“Before I can put anything in the world, I have to wait at least a couple of years and edit them. Nothing is going out that hasn’t been edited a dozen times.”— Robert Irwin, artist, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“An editor is a reader who edits.”— Robert Gottlieb, editor and author, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Matthew Perry.Reisig & Taylor/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images“Sometimes I think I went through the addiction, alcoholism and fame all to be doing what I’m doing right now, which is helping people.”— Matthew Perry, actor, born 1969 (Read the obituary.)“It was the period of apartheid. You know, it was very hard, very difficult and very painful — and many a time I felt, ‘Shall I continue with this life or shall I go on?’ But I continued. I wanted to dance.”— Johaar Mosaval, dancer, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“God would like us to be joyful / Even when our hearts lie panting on the floor.” (“Fiddler on the Roof”)— Sheldon Harnick, lyricist, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)“I remember back in the day, saying it’s so cool that the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie are still played. That’s what we wanted hip-hop to be.”— David Jolicoeur, musician, born 1968 (Read the obituary.)“Civilization cannot last or advance without culture.”— Ahmad Jamal, musician, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Harry Belafonte. Phil Burchman/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Movements don’t die because struggle doesn’t die.”— Harry Belafonte, singer and actor, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)“Some people say to artists that they should change. Change what? It’s like saying, ‘Why don’t you walk differently or talk differently?’ I can’t change my voice. That’s the way I am.”— Fernando Botero, artist, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“Performing is my way of being part of humanity — of sharing.”— André Watts, pianist, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)Renata Scotto.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Singing isn’t my whole life.”— Renata Scotto, opera singer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“It’s through working on characters in plays that I’ve learned about myself, about how people operate.”— Frances Sternhagen, actress, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)David Crosby.Mick Gold/Redferns, via Getty Images“I don’t know if I’ve found my way, but I do know I feel happy.”— David Crosby, musician, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)“I’m very abstract. Once it becomes narrative, it’s all over. Let the audience decide what it’s about.”— Rudy Perez, choreographer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t have a driven desire actually to be in the act of writing. But my response to any form of excitement about reading is to want to write.”— A.S. Byatt, author, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t think I ever wrote music to react to other music — I really had a very strong need to express myself.”— Kaija Saariaho, composer, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)Richard Roundtree.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“Narrow-mindedness is alien to me.”— Richard Roundtree, actor, born 1942, though some sources say 1937 (Read the obituary.)“The reason I’ve been able to dance for so long is absolute willpower.”— Gus Solomons Jr., dancer and choreographer, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“My practice is a resistance to the glamorous art object.”— Phyllida Barlow, artist, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“My lifetime ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form.”— Milan Kundera, author, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Mary Quant.Hulton Archive/Getty Images“The most extreme fashion should be very, very cheap. First, because only the young are daring enough to wear it; second, because the young look better in it; and third, because if it’s extreme enough, it shouldn’t last.”— Mary Quant, fashion designer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)“I spontaneously enter the unknown.”— Vivan Sundaram, artist, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“The goal is to wander, wander through the unknown in search of the unknown, all the while leaving your mark.”— Richard Hunt, artist, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Angus Cloud.Pat Martin for The New York Times“Style is how you hold yourself.”— Angus Cloud, actor, born 1998 (Read the obituary.)“I have an aura.”— Barry Humphries, actor, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“Intensity is not something I try to do. It’s just kind of the way that I am.”— Lance Reddick, actor, born 1962 (Read the obituary.)Alan Arkin.Jerry Mosey/Associated Press“There was a time when I had so little sense of myself that getting out of my skin and being anybody else was a sigh of relief. But I kind of like myself now, a lot of the times.”— Alan Arkin, actor, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“I have always thought of myself as a kind of vessel through which the work might flow.”— Valda Setterfield, dancer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“You spend a lot of time thinking about how to write a book, you probably shouldn’t be talking about it. You probably should be doing it.”— Cormac McCarthy, author, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)Elliott Erwitt.Steven Siewert/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images“In general, I don’t think too much. I certainly don’t use those funny words museum people and art critics like.”— Elliott Erwitt, photographer, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“Every morning we leave more in the bed: certainty, vigor, past loves. And hair, and skin: dead cells. This ancient detritus was nonetheless one move ahead of you, making its humorless own arrangements to rejoin the cosmos.” (“The Information”)— Martin Amis, author, born 1949 (Read the obituary.)Magda Saleh.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“I did not do it on my own.”— Magda Saleh, ballerina, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“The word ‘jazz,’ to me, only means, ‘I dare you.’”— Wayne Shorter, musician, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“What is a jazz singer? Somebody who improvises? But I don’t: I prefer simplicity.”— Astrud Gilberto, singer, born 1940 (Read the obituary.)“It’s who you are when time’s up that matters.”— Anne Perry, author, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“When I think about my daughter and the day that I move on — there is a piece of me that will remain with her.”— Ron Cephas Jones, actor, born 1957 (Read the obituary.)“Let us encourage one another with visions of a shared future. And let us bring all the grit and openheartedness and creative spirit we can muster to gather together and build that future.”— Norman Lear, television writer and producer, born 1922 (Read the obituary.)Tony Bennett.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“Life teaches you how to live it if you live long enough.”— Tony Bennett, musician, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)Photographs at top via Getty Images. More

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      Shane MacGowan and Sinead O’Connor’s Enduring Friendship

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      The two Irish singers interacted like siblings, speaking of each other warmly, but needling each other, too.When I heard the news on Thursday that Shane MacGowan had died, I thought of Sinead O’Connor, his longtime friend and collaborator. I played their duet from 1995, “Haunted,” which MacGowan had originally written for the “Sid and Nancy” soundtrack. Then I watched their joint interview promoting the song for the Irish talk show “Kenny Live.”MacGowan appeared standoffish behind black sunglasses, a lit cigarette resting between his fingers. O’Connor was perched at his side in a big sweater, fiddling with her short hair and smiling slyly at her friend. The host, Pat Kenny, called the collaboration “strange and unlikely,” but they did not see it that way. “We’re different sexes, yeah,” MacGowan said, to which O’Connor replied: “Are we?”O’Connor died this summer, a few months before MacGowan did. When I profiled her in 2021, I interviewed them both. They spoke of each other warmly, but they needled each other, too. They seemed different in the way siblings are different — two musicians riffing on a shared context, picking up different threads of the same conversation.Both made music out of their troubled childhoods, mental illness and addiction. Both helped popularize Irish music around the world, even as they maintained a critical distance from their own stardom. In interviews, they were funny and blunt. Their public reception, however, was different. In our interview, O’Connor identified a double standard. “When men are drunk and on drugs — for example, Shane MacGowan of the Pogues — people idolize them,” she said. “A man could be like that, but a woman couldn’t.”Their relationship was complex. In a 2021 biography of MacGowan, O’Connor recalled performing a version of “Haunted” with him while he was using heroin. “The producers were freaking out because Shane was nodding out on smack in between the verses,” she told MacGowan’s biographer, Richard Balls. “I was singing my verse and they didn’t believe he was going to wake up and neither did I.” In 1999, a few years after that collaboration, O’Connor called the police on MacGowan when she found him using heroin at his home.They fell out over it, then grew back together. Later, when asked if O’Connor’s police call ended his relationship with her, he replied, “No, but it ended my relationship with heroin.” In 2004, when O’Connor gave birth to a baby boy, she named him Shane. And at MacGowan’s 60th birthday party, in 2018, she performed the song “You’re The One,” which MacGowan originally sang with Moya Brennan.O’Connor and MacGowan first encountered each other in the 1980s in London, MacGowan told me over email in 2021, though he did not remember the exact circumstances. What he recalled was their dynamic. “She was very shy and I was speeding, so I talked a lot,” he said. Hanging around with him and Joey Cashman, his Pogues bandmate, “must have been a nightmare for her,” he said. “I talk a lot, but Joey makes me look like an introvert.”In her 2021 memoir “Rememberings,” O’Connor did not write much about MacGowan, but she did make a little joke about him and speed. She experimented with the drug, she said, during a stay at St. Patrick’s psychiatric hospital in Dublin. “In the locked ward where they put you if you’re suicidal, there’s more class A drugs than in Shane MacGowan’s dressing room,” she wrote.Their collaborations highlighted the distinctiveness of their voices — his gruff, hers incandescent. But when I interviewed the singer-songwriter Bob Geldof about O’Connor, he found an aesthetic similarity between them. He appreciated that they were among the few singers who did not sound blandly American. “She has an Irishness to her voice,” Geldof said of O’Connor. “Bono doesn’t sound Irish. Shane MacGowan sounds Irish.” In our interview, MacGowan called O’Connor “a brilliant singer and a brilliant Irish singer, one of the best.”MacGowan described O’Connor as fragile, sensitive and genuinely spiritual. Mostly, he spoke of her care for him as a friend. “She is a generous soul, always looking after people,” he told me. “She looked after me when I really needed it.”You could see it in the “Kenny Live” interview: When Kenny asked MacGowan pointed questions about his drug use, O’Connor lightly intercepted them. “Do you worry at all about your own mortality?” Kenny asked MacGowan, but O’Connor slid in to answer the question herself. “I do,” she said.She took a dig at her friend and turned it into an insight into being a person. “Just the whole thing: What are we all doing here? How does the Earth hang in space?” More