Re: R.I.P.? Sinead O'Connor

No details, so don't want to call it yet:

[www.irishtimes.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2023 08:31AM by ira.

I suspect we won't get an official COD for a while, if ever.

I don't see anything on her website or Twitter site, but the report comes from her family, so I think it's legit.

Just confirmed in the Washington Post ... so we know the news is not fake.

Given her struggles over many years, I imagine it's what's been feared for a very long time. Absolutely loved her music, and it was wonderful to see something like a resurgence over the past decade as people either re-discovered her or re-evaluated what they overlooked. She was probably my favorite singer of the past 40 years, and she spoke up loudly for a lot of children who needed the help when the rest of the world refused to listen.

belfast Wrote:
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> it's what's been feared for a very long time.
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Exactly. One of those doomed figures that was living on borrowed time. See also: Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, no doubt others. Really, only Brian Wilson is the only figure I can think of who came back from such odds. Syd Barret and SLy Stone didn't die right away, but they never recovered from zombie status.

I was disappointed in the bizarre direction of her career after those first two stellar albums, esp. "I Do Not Want." After that masterwork, was hoping we had a new Kate Bush/Peter Gabriel-type who could marry experimental ideas with soulful pop. Instead, we got a covers album. I mean, "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina"? Really? No-one was asking for a karaoke album so early in a promising career. Then she did stuff like, err, a rap song about the Irish potato famine. Uh huh...I mean, it was as good a track as a concept like that could be. But still, she shot her career momentum in the foot, and never really recovered in the public's mind. When her mental health issues started coming out, I sadly thought, ah, that explains it. The TP review agrees with belfast about some return-to-form albums. She was long off my radar by that point, but glad to hear that..



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2023 06:28PM by MrFab.

Those first two albums still hold up as her best albums, but her career does look astonishing if you were to curate like a double album of highlights - that is, ignore the misfires and focus on the good stuff. Between the unevenness of certain albums and how many "one-offs" she recorded (collaborations, soundtrack and charity album contributions), a great compilation feels like the best way to explore her work beyond those first two albums. So Far... The Best Of isn't it though.

Maybe something like this. It only goes up to 2000, partly because the later stuff isn't available on Spotify.

I also liked her "Collaborations" compilation which licensed 17 tracks from all over the place; showcasing her versatile approach. "The Lion + The Cobra" hit me like a ton of bricks, but at the time I didn't warm to "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" at all, and stopped "collecting" her releases. The decent spread of her albums in the Record Cell currently is down to my wife, who also set me straight on The Nits, who I had also not been paying enough attention to. Poor Sinead seemed to have been in constant turmoil and now it's over. Yet she managed a large body of work; much of it impressive. All of it bristling with integrity.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

So saddened by Sinéad's passing. She was such a remarkable talent. I felt there have always been people who sought and secured stardom only to have it ruin them, but Sinéad clearly had so many challenges even from childhood and her adolescence. But what a magnificent songwriter and singer. Perhaps it might have been better had she remained a niche alternative artist rather than a pop star following “Nothing Compares 2 U.”

The direction she went in after I DO NOT WANT WHAT I HAVEN'T GOT shows how unhappy she was with pop stardom. She made the music she wanted to, especially in the 2010s, rather than trying to have another hit with "Nothing Compares 2 U Pt. 4." I love her comment "“I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career, and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.” But it's a tragedy that pursuing her own path didn't make her any happier or extend her life.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2023 11:48PM by steevee.

It's come up that O'Connor had a Spotify account, which one can verify by the playlists she shared in her new Twitter account. (A bit convoluted, but she opened a new Twitter to replace her old one just a few weeks ago and confirmed it to skeptics with an uploaded video.)

One in particular is titled "Songs I Wanna Cover 2023" and it's heartbreaking to see what she had in mind and what we probably won't get the chance to hear from her.

[open.spotify.com]

I never thought I'd agree with MAGA-era Morissey, but he's spot on with how nobody gave a flip about Sinead when she was alive and oh, now that she's gone, she's a feminist icon. I LOVED her post-"Nothing Compares 2 U" output - her "Bossy" album, and her non-album cover of Mahalia Jackson's "Troubles of The World" a few years ago. She also guested on Shane McGowan's "Haunted," which was popularized on the "Sid & Nancy" soundtrack. Rest in Power, Sinead.

She wrote an autobiography that landed on several bestseller lists. There was a lot of buzz a couple of years ago about the very highly regarded documentary about her that came out. The multiple times she was in a dark space and made it known on social media, it made the news and there was a general outpouring of concern. Most of the shows on her late career tours of City Wineries sold out.

Morrissey is just exercising his tendency to be a self-righteous asswipe about topics nobody asked his opinion on. Which is about the only area in which he's reliable anymore.

Pretty certain anyone who visits this site has some experience with her, good or bad. And an opinion of course.

I did like her songwriting, but it was the WAY that she sang that did it for me. In ‘last day of our acquaintance’: you used to hold my hand when the plane took off….where did that note come from? Likewise in ‘I am stretched on your grave’: and your maiden head still.. who sings notes like that?

She’d find phrasings that I swear were as imaginative as phrasings Charlie Parker could find with the saxophone. Magic!

I also find Morrisey's self-righteousness irritating, but he's spot on with regards to Sinead....she became something of an outcast when she ripped up a photo of the Pope on SNL, and I think that was the beginning of her troubles. She was pilloried for that and it wasn't long before her drug problems arose. She had bipolar disorder (which went undiagnosed until much later in her life) and that is difficult to deal with when untreated...I will never forget all the crap levied on her from singers such as Madonna and Miley Cyrus, who dismissed her as just another "crazy woman." She received no support from the music community, save for a few and that always bothered me. She was a fervent activist for abused children and women's rights, and it was an integral part of her earlier music. She deserved more (positive) recognition for that.

Her voice was transcendent, her version of "Nothing Compares..." brought the song to a whole new level, the fragility, the anguish, I felt it in every note. I lost track of her after the "Peace Together" benefit concert in '93, where she sang a beautiful rendition of the song (Children) Be Still.

I have begun to appreciate her music more over the past few years, after "rediscovering" her later work, I hope she is appreciated for her contributions to music in the future, and not the controversies that the press molded around her.

FWIW, there’s a great Lou Reed story in her memoir where she mentions how he treated her differently:

Lou performed at shows with Sinéad O’Connor on a few occasions, beginning with the Bob Dylan tribute shortly after her appearance on SNL. O’Connor and Reed didn’t really connect that night. But at a similar event held two years later in Carnegie Hall, this time a birthday tribute for Roger Daltrey of The Who, the two once again shared the stage. She writes, “The only other time I remember being starstruck was when I met Lou Reed, a person I didn’t realize I loved so much until I met him. I had fallen in love with his album ‘New York,’ especially the track called ‘Busload of Faith,’ and I had listened to it a lot.” O’Connor put out feelers about singing backup for Reed.

O’Connor recalls, “… [T]he next thing I knew, Lou Reed came into my dressing room and started talking to me; I could tell that he thought I was cheeky for asking if I could sing backup vocals. But when he said that yes, I could, all I could see was his mouth moving. I couldn’t hear what he was saying anymore; it all came out like a whirl, whirl, whirl sound, as if I were on an acid trip. … It was like having a panic attack…. I did do the backing vocals for Lou, though I can’t remember even what songs because I was not on planet Earth, I was in heaven somewhere. And then I had a beautiful experience with the same beautiful man not long after.”

O’Connor goes on to tell the story about a TV show she and Reed appeared on in London, a kind of round-robin live music show. No one would look at O’Connor, because “the fashion was to treat me like a crazy person, a pariah, because of what I did on ‘SNL.’” Reed, when he came to the dress rehearsal, made a huge point of ignoring absolutely everybody in the room except O’Connor. “He makes it his business to find me, hangs on to me. He hugs me demonstratively warmly as if we know each other really well. It was a really sweet thing to do because he didn’t have to do that, and it changed the way everybody in there reacted to me… I’ve had a very soft spot in my heart for Mr. Lou Reed ever since and I think about him quite a lot.”



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2023 03:29AM by belfast.

In some ways, it seems, O'Connor and Reed were kindred spirits. Both tended to do just whatever TF they wanted to do with their music and with their careers. Both did some drastic things that shocked their audiences -- O'Connor's photo-tearing moment on SNL, Reed's act of pretending to shoot up onstage (and then handing the syringe to an audience member as a souvenir). Reed was notoriously prickly, even antagonistic with the media, and O'Connor ... well, she certainly had every reason to be.

How About I Be Me And You Be You was an excellent late career album of hers.

Love the Lou Reed story! After hearing nothing except asshole stories about Reed for years, I am happy to hear he had some signs of humanity.

Just posted a 2007 interview Dave Schulps did with her.

Yes, I just saw that. Can’t believe that she actually played at the (not so) Silent Movie Theater. I’ve been there a number of times, and it really is just a little repertory theatre. Doubt it holds more than a few hundred, tops. Quite a come-down from the mega-stardom of her early years. But mental illness or no, from what I understand she always delivered live.

A year later:

"Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchial asthma, her death certificate reveals, according to an Irish newspaper." Possibly caused by smoking.

I'm glad it wasn't drugs or suicide.