O’Connor, Sinead

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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

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      Popcast (Deluxe): Lizzo, Travis Scott and the Limits of Persona

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:How a star’s public persona, varnished or unvarnished, can dictate what they can get away with in the eye of their followers. Lizzo, who for years has emphasized personal kindness as her brand, has seen her career derailed by allegations that she mistreated her backup dancers. Cardi B threw a microphone at an audience member in reaction to getting splashed with water, but has emerged unscathedTravis Scott’s No. 1 album “Utopia,” its many guest appearances and its oxygen-swallowing hugenessThe resilience of Playboi Carti, who has built a growing cultlike career while releasing no new musicRemembering the life and work of Sinead O’Connor and Angus CloudNew songs from Cowgirl Clue and B-Lovee featuring Luh TylerSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Ireland Says Goodbye to Sinéad O’Connor at Funeral Procession

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      In the coastal town of Bray, south of Dublin, the site of Ms. O’Connor’s last Irish home, mourners gathered to pay their respects to the singer.At the close of a life poised between tradition and rebellion, Ireland gave Sinéad O’Connor a send-off on Tuesday that embraced both.In keeping with an old Irish custom, her coffin was first carried past her last family home in Ireland, in Bray, County Wicklow.But many of those who gathered, or who left her tributes, brought a spirit more in keeping with her life as a rebel who took on the establishment — most notably the Roman Catholic Church — and who spoke up for the oppressed. Among the signs left in front of her family home was one that read “BLACK LIVES MATTER,” “GAY PRIDE” and “REFUGEES WELCOME.”At noon, the cortege reached Ms O’Connor’s former home on Bray’s seaside promenade. The crowd broke into prolonged applause, with some raising fists in salute. Many were in tears. Earlier, as thousands of people waited for her cortege to pass alongside the small town’s seaside promenade, a classic Volkswagen van draped in rainbow and Rastafarian flags had played a selection of her music from speakers. The playlist mixed her rock and pop hits with her renditions of Irish traditional ballads, including “The Foggy Dew.”Ms. O’Connor, who was found dead in her London apartment last month, converted to Islam in 2018, and her family will give her a Muslim burial on Tuesday. While the family wished to keep the funeral private, they invited the public to come to Bray for a last farewell.Some of those lining the streets — suddenly sunny after days of gray skies — were avid music fans. Others were activists, and there were also abuse survivors who had drawn strength from Ms. O’Connor’s openness about her own experience of childhood trauma. Dave Sharp, who said he had spent years in care homes and been the victim of abuse, traveled to Bray from Glasgow on Monday.“We didn’t have much notice but I’d promised myself that I’d be there for her,” he said. “Sinéad O’Connor is one of the bravest women I’ve ever known of. She not only put her life and career on the line, but she was ahead of her time.”The president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, will attend the funeral with his wife, Sabrina.“The outpouring of grief and appreciation of the life and work of Sinéad O’Connor demonstrates the profound impact which she had on the Irish people,” he said in a statement. Speaking of her “immense heroism” and the pain it caused her, he added: “That is why all those who are seeking to make a fist of their life, combining its different dimensions in their own way, can feel so free to express their grief at her loss.”In accordance with an old Irish custom, her coffin was first carried past her last family home in Ireland, on the seaside promenade in Bray.Clodagh Kilcoyne/ReutersIn recent days, among a rolling wave of tributes, a creative agency temporarily augmented a World War II territorial marker on nearby Bray Head to celebrate the singer. Where once it said “Eire” — Irish for Ireland — to warn belligerent aircraft that they were approaching neutral Irish territory, the giant sign now says “Eire 🤍 Sinéad.”Passionate and often controversial, Ms. O’Connor had slowly become, in the eyes of many, a national treasure, a woman who spoke up for the weak and oppressed, and who took an early stand against the abuses of the Catholic Church in Ireland and elsewhere.Her public struggles with mental health inspired protective feelings in fans and supporters, and added to the grief at news of her untimely death at age 56. Although an autopsy has been completed in London, no cause of death has yet been given.Ms. O’Connor, performing in Avenches, Switzerland, in 2008, had become a national treasure in the eyes of many.Ennio Leanza/EPA, via ShutterstockOver the weekend, performers and crowds came together at summer music festivals around the island to sing some of the musician’s most beloved songs, such as “Mandinka,” and “Black Boys on Mopeds.”The week before, the crowd fell silent, then applauded, at Ireland’s biggest sporting occasion, the inter-county Gaelic football final in Dublin’s 80,000-capacity Croke Park, as the big screens played the famous video of her version of “Nothing Compares 2 U.”Even the church, famously the target of her anger, has paid respects. Speaking last week, before the annual ancient pilgrimage to climb Croagh Patrick in the west of Ireland, the Catholic primate of Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin, said he had heard many stories about her kindness.“Clearly her own trauma and her own personal experiences made her a very compassionate person who reached out to the marginalized — she had real empathy,” he said. “God rest her troubled soul.”Flowers, messages and gifts were piled in front of Ms. O’Connor’s former home, many paying tribute to her empathy and the causes she supported.Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters More

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      The Raw Art and Life of Sinead O’Connor

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicSinead O’Connor, who died recently at 56, had a complicated relationship to the spotlight, and to stardom. She revealed her most vulnerable self over and again, and was often chastised for it, but her direct expression of her personal truth also became one of her signature artistic achievements.But O’Connor was a signature musician, too — her first two albums were intimate, vividly intense and full of nimble and variegated singing. And she was an inventive covers artist too, often dismantling other performers’s songs until she’d unearthed their emotional core.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about O’Connor’s unlikely pop fame, the musical corners she naturally gravitated toward, the ways in which her personal convictions intersected with her art, and the paths she followed once leaving the spotlight behind.Guests:Alfred Soto, who writes about music for Pitchfork, Billboard and othersAmanda Hess, a New York Times critic at largeConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Sinead O’Connor, Prince and the Thrill of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’

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      O’Connor, who was found dead this week, was catapulted to fame when she covered the song written by Prince on her sophomore album.Sinead O’Connor and Prince, passionate singer-songwriters who both died in their mid-50s, were tied together by the plaintive song “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which catapulted O’Connor to fame when she recorded it for her sophomore album.Prince had composed the song in 1984, deciding to give it to the Family, a side project featuring the singers Susannah Melvoin and Paul Peterson. But the track never gained much recognition when the band released its self-titled album in 1985.The response was considerably different when O’Connor, working with the Japanese jazz musician Gota Yashiki and the producer Nellee Hooper, recorded a stripped-down version for her 1990 album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.”“Nothing Compares 2 U” became a No. 1 hit in 17 countries, topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four straight weeks and helped win O’Connor a Grammy (which she later refused to accept). The track’s popular music video, featuring a close-up of O’Connor’s shaved head and piercing gaze, was itself nominated for a Grammy.“As far as I’m concerned, it’s my song,” O’Connor told The New York Times in 2021.Prince was pleased to see O’Connor’s version become so popular, Melvoin said in an interview this week.“When it hit and it was doing remarkably well, he had a big smile on his face about it.” Melvoin said. “He loved it. At one point later in his life, he was known to say, ‘Thank you for all the beautiful houses, Sinead.’”Peterson said he was so shocked when he first heard O’Connor’s cover over the car radio that he had to pull over.“I didn’t know who she was, and I felt like I had ownership in that song even though I didn’t write it,” he said in an interview. “So I think I was a little disappointed that our version didn’t get out there at the incredible rate that hers did.”At the same time, Peterson said, he feels thrilled that O’Connor’s cover has been so influential. “It’s incredible the amount of people’s lives that song has touched,” he said. “I was just thrilled to be a small part of that”Melvoin said Prince wrote the song both about herself and his housekeeper, Sandy Scipioni, who left the role after her father died. Melvoin and Prince had been intimately involved for years, she said, but were encountering difficulties in their relationship when he wrote “Nothing Compares 2 U.”It took only a short time for Prince to draft the song at his Eden Prairie warehouse studio, Susan Rogers, Prince’s sound engineer, said in Duane Tudahl’s book “Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions.”“I was amazed how beautiful it was,” Rogers told Tudahl. “He took his notebook and he went off to the bedroom, wrote the lyrics very quickly, came back out and sang it.”O’Connor wrote in her memoir, “Rememberings,” that she felt a particular resonance with the lines, “All the flowers that you planted Mama/In the backyard/All died when you went away.”“Every time I perform it, I feel it’s the only time I get to spend with my mother and that I’m talking with her again,” wrote O’Connor, who was 18 when her mother died in a car crash. “There’s a belief that she’s there, that she can hear me and I can connect to her.”Although “Nothing Compares 2 U” was vital to O’Connor’s career, she grew conflicted about Prince, writing in her memoir about a distressing encounter at his Los Angeles residence.They had first met at a club around the time of O’Connor’s debut album in 1987, she wrote, but did not interact again until after her version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” became a hit in America.When O’Connor arrived at Prince’s residence, she wrote, the singer criticized her for swearing in interviews. Prince then suggested the two engage in a pillow fight, she wrote, and began hitting her with a pillowcase containing a pillow and some hard object.O’Connor fled and Prince pursued her in his car, she wrote, until she escaped to a nearby home. (A spokeswoman for Prince’s estate did not respond to requests for comment.)“I never wanted to see that devil again,” O’Connor wrote. More

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      Sinead O’Connor Was Ireland’s Alternative Moral Compass

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      In any society, she would have been radical for a pop star. But in Ireland, she was revolutionary.On March 9, Sinead O’Connor stood onstage at the Vicar Street concert venue in Dublin. Her presence was greeted by a prolonged standing ovation. O’Connor was at the RTE Choice Music Prize, an evening celebrating the best Irish albums of the past year. A new award had been invented for the occasion: classic Irish album, and O’Connor was there to accept it for her 1990 record, “I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got.”It was the day after my 40th birthday. Untethered by this life landmark, I felt strangely grounded by her presence: Sinéad is here, all is well in the world. Soaking in the noise of the audience cheering her on, she smiled, almost bashful, before dedicating the award to refugees in Ireland.O’Connor had a tendency to show up at necessary moments. This time, her reappearance was a relief, because everyone in the crowd was worried about her. Her son, Shane, took his own life in 2022. He was 17. She was no stranger to articulating her personal struggles: the abuse she suffered as a child, the impact of a news media that sometimes hounded her, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and PTSD.And now, here she was, onstage in Dublin, a strange sort of lighthouse, beaming again. “How is she?” I asked one of the stage crew. “Flying form,” came the answer.O’Connor receiving the Classic Irish Album award at the RTE Choice Music Prize, in Dublin, in March.Kieran Frost/Redferns, via Getty ImagesAt the time, there was something of an O’Connor renaissance occurring. Her 2021 memoir, “Rememberings,” was critically lauded, and she posted the positive reviews excitedly on social media. The 2022 documentary “Nothing Compares,” directed by Kathryn Ferguson, correctly positioned her as an alternative moral compass in Ireland, driven by integrity and authenticity, not shame.When I was a child, Ireland felt like a phony place, yet I had no way to conceptualize its inauthenticity. I was raised Catholic, and made to navigate the weirdness of First Holy Communion, novenas and trips to the shrine at Knock. The idea of defying this was incomprehensible. The dominance of the church was simply a given.I was 9 when television news bulletins framed O’Connor destroying a photograph of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live” as blasphemous, missing the serious statement behind the act. As far as Irish society was concerned, he was a living saint. The incident rattled the country, and it also rattled me. You could do that?There was no MTV in my house, but for some odd reason, my grandmother’s television set, on the other side of the country, in Galway, provided this magic portal. I would stay up late when visiting her, and O’Connor would drop in. “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Her open, searching gaze. The tear. You could do that, too? You could shave your head? Dye Public Enemy’s logo on the side of your head? Be an Irish woman wearing ripped denim on television? Go on an Irish chat show dressed as a priest? Come out as lesbian, and later declare you were “three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay”?In any society at the time, this stuff was radical. But in Ireland, it was revolutionary.O’Connor at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1990.DMI/The Life Picture Collection, via ShutterstockAnd Ireland was in her songs. “Dublin in a rainstorm” was the setting for one of her finest, “Troy.” Her voice was pure and strong, and Anita Baker described it as “cavernous.” She traversed alt-rock and pop, reggae and traditional Irish music. She covered Prince, Nirvana and John Grant. On “8 Good Reasons” (a title that referred to the eyes of her four children, she explained), she sang, “You know I love to make music, but my head got wrecked by the business.”When I first interviewed O’Connor, in 2007, backstage at the Oxegen music festival, in Kildare, she seemed a little shaky, but utterly cool, friendly and fun. In 2014, I sat listening to her talk about her latest album, “I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss,” as she chain-smoked in a Dublin recording studio, her face tattoos faded by laser removal treatment.Although I only knew her from afar, the sense of connection she created, both through the music and what she stood for, was profound. Her loss has instigated a deep collective grief across Ireland. She was a symbol of hope as much as defiance, an artist and thinker who always stood on the horizon, urging others to catch up.When I heard the news, I felt the gut-punch of loss. It was as though something elemental had departed the world, and some essential tributary had run dry within me.My wife stood up from the couch, walked to the fireplace, and lit a candle, the traditional gesture of Irish grief and remembrance. The national broadcaster’s main radio station played song after song. We remembered that night in March, when the roar and applause of the audience in Dublin seemed to say: thank you, we love you, you were right. More

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      Sinead O’Connor’s Death Is Not Suspicious, Police Say

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      The London police force said that the Irish singer was found dead at a home in the city.Sinead O’Connor was found dead in a private home in London, the city’s police said on Thursday, a day after the provocative Irish singer’s death was announced. While few details have been released about the death, the police said that it was not being treated as suspicious.Ms. O’Connor, best known for her rendition of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” was 56.Her family confirmed Ms. O’Connor’s death in a short statement. “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinead,” the statement said. “Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.”Ms. O’Connor recently moved to London, according to local news media outlets. On Thursday afternoon, the city’s police force said in a statement that officers pronounced Ms. O’Connor dead at the scene at a residential address in southeast London. “A file will be prepared for the coroner,” the statement added.The local coroner’s court said in a news release that an autopsy would be undertaken, the results of which “may not available for several weeks.” Then a coroner would decide whether to hold an inquest into the cause of death, the news release added.Ms. O’Connor released 10 studio albums, including her 1990 breakthrough, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.” Although her music cut through on both sides of the Atlantic, she was also known for stirring public controversy. In 1992, she ended an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” by ripping a photo of Paul John Paul II into pieces to protest sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. More