RIP Sinead O'Connor

I was very sad to read about the death of Sinead O’Connor. A unique artist who was too bold and ahead of her time.


Seek out the film Nothing Compares to You by Kathryn Ferguson. It charts her career and how the music industry did her wrong in the 1990s. At the time, I didn’t realise how ugly it got for her in the US. Mainstream media is always ready to vilify anyone that calls things out, especially women, and sadly it hasn’t changed much today. 

Mandinka is my favorite song by her.

I don't know no shame
I feel no pain
I can't see the flame

The following are a few extracts from Vulture about the night she sang it at the Grammys in 1989.

When America Met Sinéad O’Connor
by Allyson McCabe:

Most people point to O’Connor’s destruction of a photo of Pope John Paul II, during her October 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live, as the reason for her exile from the pop world. But it was on this night in Los Angeles, three years prior, that revealed from the outset what the rest of the rest of the world would learn soon enough: her willingness to take a stand made her powerful — and threatening.

O’Connor’s voice is clear and cutting, alternating between a whisper and a dare. If you look closely you might notice that she is wearing an infant’s sleepsuit tied behind her waist as she rocks back and forth in her Doc Martens, wailing, “I don’t know no shame/I feel no pain/I can’t see the flame!”

”Mandinka” was a fearless battle cry, but it was only her opening act. The onesie O’Connor wore was her son Jake’s, a middle finger to the executives at her record label who had warned her that motherhood and a career were incompatible. The man in the crosshairs was Public Enemy’s logo, which Chuck D described as symbolizing the Black man in America. She wore it as a badge of solidarity with the band, and by extension, all rappers who had been erased from the program.

Despite not winning the Grammy, she subverted the record label’s hot-girl marketing strategy at a time when starlets like Tiffany and Debbie Gibson were burning up the pop charts. Despite the Recording Academy’s attempts to suppress rap, she managed to foil those plans too. O’Connor showed us a fierceness that made her great, but also foreshadowed how it would all come crashing down, sooner rather than later.

RIP Sinead O’Connor ( December 8, 1966 - July 26, 2023)