Thursday, July 27, 2023

Thank You for Hearing Me

Totally bummed about Sinéad O'Connor's death.  .....and she's 3-4 years younger than I !   

While she had a trouble and storied life, for sure, in all of that turmoil and chatter starts to get lost of what an incredible artist she was.

O'Connor had a unique voice, but many don't know she wrote her own music - for the most part. Her debut album, Lion & the Cobra is flawless. As is her second and most famous disk, I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got. 

Even more impressive, she made them at ages 20 and 23 respectively. 

The latter disk spawned her biggest hit, a cover of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U".  It was rumoured that Prince was not happy it was a hit for her when it wasn't for his group the Family.  Either way, he made a lot of coin from her rendition. 

There really is not a bad song on any of those two disks. And she had one offs of other songs, some I've featured in My Music Monday. I'll link those below. 

It was during the promotion of I Do Not Have.....when she ripped up a picture of the pope on SNL and cried, "fight the real enemy"

I really don't know where all the shock and dismay came from the audience and NBC. It was widely known by that time that the Catholic church had been covering up tens (hundreds?) of thousands of cases of sexual abuse by priests in said church. 

Her punishment for that would be far worse than it was for Father Flanagan putting his pud up Timmy O'Leary's ass. She'd be musically ostracized for the rest of her career for the most part. He'd just get reassigned to another church to make Jimmy O'Malley gag on priest dong. 

She would still put out albums up until 2014, none matching the success of her first two - though some had some really good songs. She dabbled in multiple religions along the way and struggled with her mental health. Her life took attention away from her music and probably vice versa to a degree. 

I knew I wanted to add a song of hers today, but struggled with which one. I had gotten all her music up until about 2010 but kept focusing on the first two disks. I had already featured "Troy", "Feels So Different", "Why Don't You Do Right?" "Drink Before the War" and "Sacrifice" over the years. All deserve repeats, so click away. 

But I went with "Jackie". Undoubtedly her shortest song and some really strong vocals and emotions. Emotion was always the thread to all her music. She conveyed it like few other artists....almost to her detriment. It worked for her, and it was the appeal which drew me to her as an artist. 

She will be missed. 

 


Song by: Sinéad O'Connor

3 comments:

James Dwight Williamson said...

She had a very hard and odd life . Hope she is at peace

Elle Clancy said...

She was amazing in many ways. Glad her advocacy isn't being overlooked by people. Favorite duet was Haunted with Shane MacGowan.

Ur-spo said...

Do we know yet how and why she died?