Sinéad O'Connor - The Rise and Fall of an Untamable Rebel

Blessed with extraordinary vocal talent and an almost equally extraordinary capacity for self-destruction — wild, aggressive, romantic, desperate — Sinéad O'Connor is one of the great female protagonists of rock between the late Eighties and the following decade. Hers was always, in every sense, an outsized life. Against everyone, but often against herself too, with her turmoil, her outbursts and her provocations, from the moment she debuted on the scene completely shaven-headed, to the time she tore up a photo of the Pope live on TV, all the way to her decision to be ordained a priestess first and then convert to Islam.

O'Connor thus managed the double feat of conquering enormous worldwide success and then squandering it within a few years, partly under the weight of her physical and mental health problems. So the stardom she herself craved turned against her, in a kind of cruel contrapasso. Right up to the tragic epilogue of 2023, which left everyone who had loved her stunned.

Sinéad O'Connor was born in 1966 in Dublin, in the working-class suburb of Glenageary. Hers was a deeply troubled childhood: at age 9, after her parents' separation, she was placed in the custody of her mother Marie. But when the abuse inflicted by her mother (an alcoholic struggling with depression) on all four children came to light, her father took custody of her and sent her to various Catholic boarding schools. Expelled from the school she was attending, O'Connor was also arrested for theft and locked up in a reformatory. Even as a child, though, Sinéad had her golden refuge: music. At a wedding party she was noticed by Paul Byrne, bassist of the Irish band In Tua Nua, with whom she recorded the single "Take My Hand" in 1981; she then joined another group, Ton Ton Macoute. During this period she studied piano and voice at the Dublin College of Music. Meanwhile, she managed to make contact with the entourage of manager Fachtna O'Ceallaigh, a friend of U2 and boss of the Mother label. That connection earned her a spot on the soundtrack of the film "The Captive", produced by Dave Evans of U2. It was the prelude to her debut album, released in 1987. In the meantime, however, another tragedy struck her life: her mother died in a car accident in 1985.

The Lion And The Cobra (1987), with clear references to Psalm 91 of the Bible, is a dazzling debut that catapulted the Dublin artist onto the world stage. Sinéad was 20, with a bold look (shaven-headed, almost asexual, dressed and posed in post-punk fashion) and a spine-tingling voice, capable of sudden shifts in register, tightrope-walking acrobatics and breathtaking guttural high notes. Her songs are as fierce as they are tender and pure. And her own quivering singing, rather than inciting anger, manages to move listeners through sheer intensity and pathos. The album's themes range from timeless fairy tales to Greek mythology, from tormented religiosity to raw, searing intimacy.

The musical repertoire is just as vast: from the most aggressive punk-rock ("Mandinka") to the sensual hip-hop of "I Want Your (Hands on Me)", from Peter Gabriel-style ethno-funk on "Jerusalem" to the sweet ballad "Jackie" and the Celtic-tinged folk of "Just Like You Said" (for harpsichord, flutes and accordion). But the real tour de force on the album is the nearly six-and-a-half-minute "Troy", a sensational track built on quasi-symphonic arrangements and, above all, on Sinéad's astonishing vocal forays, sung with a truly epic intensity and a passionate fervor not heard since the days of Janis Joplin. Braver than she would rarely be again, Sinéad O'Connor also explores the recesses of vocal avant-garde, as shown by a track like "Never Get Old", which could easily have featured on a Laurie Anderson album.

Riding the success (mostly critical) earned by her debut album, O'Connor had a bombshell in store for her next work, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, released in 1990. It features an old song by Prince, which the Irish singer manages to completely transform, steeping it in an atmosphere of desperate romanticism and unparalleled melancholy: "Nothing Compares 2 U" would become one of the biggest hits of the decade and her greatest success ever. Beyond the beauty of the song, powered by one of those melodies that open up the heart, the video also hit the mark, portraying an O'Connor still with her head shaved, but more tender and feminine than ever, shedding warm tears of love from her big doe eyes.

This new "romantic" direction tends to take over the other tracks as well: with the post-punk edges of her debut smoothed out, Sinéad takes on the role of a sophisticated pop chanteuse, yet still capable of interpreting every song in a vibrant, personal way, always adding that extra touch of pathos. On this "melancholic" register come some of the most memorable ballads in her catalogue, such as "Feel So Different", "Three Babies" and "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance", alternately whispered and shouted over a sober, elegant sonic backdrop, in which strings and choirs are never excessive or redundant. There's no shortage, however, of more markedly rhythmic episodes, such as the r'n'b accompanying the a cappella singing of "I Am Stretched On Your Grave", the aggressive pop of "The Emperor's New Clothes" and the electrified rock of "Jump In The River", another successful single pulled from the album. And the value of the lyrics remains intact: always intense and painfully autobiographical, not without the occasional flash of social commentary, like the denunciation of English hypocrisy in the folk-inflected "Black Boys On Mopeds".

More mature and less abrasive than its predecessor, the album confirms O'Connor's full talent, as she puts her voice and her interpretive gifts at the service of a string of superbly crafted songs, in terms of melody, sound and arrangement.

With I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, Sinéad O'Connor builds a bridge between the fiery post-punk of early U2 and the celestial folk arrangements of Enya, performing a crucial act of connection in the history of Irish popular music.

Meanwhile, musical accolades alternate with provocative behavior, driven by a seething anger long kept repressed. Her love affair with America, in particular, ends early after a string of incidents: first, Sinéad refuses to appear on "Saturday Night Live" alongside comedian Andrew "Dice" Clay because of his xenophobic and anti-feminist attitudes; then, in New Jersey, at the Garden State Arts Center, she digs in her heels against the request to open her concert with the American national anthem, as tradition would dictate, infuriating, among others, Frank Sinatra; finally, when she does appear on "Saturday Night Live", she sets off a firestorm by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II live on air, in protest against the repressive policies enacted by the Catholic Church in her home country. Scandal and international condemnation rain down on O'Connor, who is quickly branded a heretic or, at best, unhinged. It marks the start of a vicious and shameful "witch hunt" that will haunt her for a long time to come, despite her later apologies and explanations ("At that moment," she would say, "it was the right thing to do, to protest against the Church's interference in Irish life"). Bigots and reactionaries from every corner of the globe find in her the ideal target for their assorted frustrations and intolerances.

But, whether her crude detractors like it or not, Sinéad O'Connor is by now a diva, and she behaves like one on Am I Not Your Girl (1992), a collection of covers of classics drawn from the repertoire of great music stars (and beyond), past and present: from "Gloomy Sunday" (Billie Holiday) to "I Wanna Be Kissed By You" (Marilyn Monroe), from "Why Don't You Do Right?" (a song by Joe McCoy, sung even by... Jessica Rabbit!), through the jazzy "Black Coffee" (Sonny Burke/Paul Francis Webster) to the ubiquitous "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (the Lloyd Webber evergreen that would soon become a hit all over again thanks to the far flatter version by Madonna in "Evita"); but perhaps the true gem of the album is the heart-wrenching love ode "Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home", a reworking of a Loretta Lynn song already covered by Elvis Costello.

The former Irish punkette sings with the class and verve of a seasoned chanteuse, backed by a Fifties-style jazzy orchestra, following in the footsteps of the songs that "made her want to become a singer". All in all, it's a pleasant, graceful record, well played and well sung — though one that many critics would fail to understand.

For O'Connor, this is one of her hardest periods. Savaged by critics, hated by legions of detractors and gripped by a dark depression, she finds help and comfort in Peter Gabriel, who wants her on the bill of the Womad Tour, the touring world-music caravan devised by the former Genesis frontman. Meanwhile, she releases a collection of traditional covers that marks, for a moment at least, her reconciliation with the "Great Mother Ireland". A theme — motherhood and the oppression/liberation bound up with it — that will resurface in her next studio record too.

Billed as "a prayer from Ireland", Universal Mother (1994) is an open-hearted confession from Sinéad O'Connor. A kind of musical outlet for her demons and her family, personal, social and political psychodramas (the album opens with an excerpt from a 1970 speech by Germaine Greer against patriarchy). Swept along by this torrential stream of consciousness, the album is inevitably uneven, but it does contain some splendid ballads that recall the glories of I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got: the aching "John I Love You", dedicated to her ex-husband John Reynolds, in which the capacity to love coincides with a return to childhood innocence; the tender lullaby "My Darling Child", dedicated to her children (and written by Irish veteran Phil Coulter); the mystical "A Perfect Indian"; and the long, mournful (and admittedly rather long-winded) "Thank You For Hearing Me". Workmanlike, if not especially original, is the acoustic cover of Nirvana's "All Apologies".

O'Connor blends fierceness and naivety, as shown by the biting invective against Ireland's anti-abortion laws in "Red Football" and by "Famine", a kind of history of Ireland set to a hip-hop beat. Finally, the anthemic "Fire On Babylon", with its techno pulse and apocalyptic atmosphere, gives shape to yet another outburst against her mother's abuse and the repression of the Catholic Church.

Born of Sinéad's confusion and bewilderment, brimming with passion and emotional wounds, Universal Mother remains one of her most heartfelt and moving works.

The love/hate relationship with her mother Marie resurfaces forcefully too on the EP Gospel Oak (1997). "This Is To Mother You", in particular, is an almost unbearably painful nursery rhyme, poised between rage and regret, tenderness and fury: “Tutto il dolore che hai provato/ tutta la violenza che abita nella tua anima/ tutte le cose sbagliate che hai fatto/ tutto questo strapperò da te quando arriverò”. The record's other pivotal track is the wistful ballad "4 My Love", introduced by martial drums and sung by O'Connor with all the melancholy in the world: a small melodic gem that would be unjustly overlooked.

Overall, this small, precious EP proves that the heart of beautiful Sinéad's music still beats strong, merely stifled by a life lived in constant turmoil, perpetually overdrawn on her nervous and psychological resources. Perhaps that's why she poured all her emotion into her two children, Roisin and Jake (born from her marriage to Reynolds), to the point of saying: "On my deathbed, my only hope will be that I was a good mother".

The Irish singer-songwriter herself would declare: "I was trying to carry a pain as big as the Empire State Building. I was full of sweetness, but also of rage, and if I didn't let it out I risked going mad. Today I feel strong and I have immense faith in God". And so the former skinhead, who once unleashed ferocious howls and punk invective, gradually transformed into a preacher — and by no means a meek one. In 2000, in fact, she took the name Sister Bernadette-Marie and was ordained a priest of the Latin Tridentine Catholic Church (not recognised by the Vatican). The inevitable result was renewed media overexposure and international bewilderment.

A prickly character, "impossible to deal with" according to her own record label, O'Connor has fallen out with more or less everyone — including her fellow countrymen U2, whom she accused of "running the Dublin scene like a mafia". Living "against the grain" has always been her philosophy, and her shaved head, in stark contrast with the tenderness of her eyes and the delicacy of her features, has been its most faithful icon. The story goes that shaving her head was her first act of protest against the record industry's interference, because the music business, in her words, "is the worst business you could possibly be involved in". She boycotted the Grammy Awards in 1991 and declared that "MTV should be abolished, because television kills art and poetry". She's capable of pulling the plug on a concert over some trivial technical detail, as happened in Rome, or of pushing her own collaborators to the brink, as confirmed by those who worked with her on the soundtrack to the film In The Name Of The Father, for which O'Connor recorded the intense "You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart".

But Sinéad the unbearable can also be generous. She donated her $750,000 home in the Hollywood Hills to the Red Cross. She has taken part in numerous charity events and donated the proceeds of the mini-CD My Special Child to the Kurdish people. The wider public, however, never forgave her for the "Saturday Night Live" incident (she was booed at the Bob Dylan Tribute in New York, and was even the target of a boycott campaign that culminated in the destruction of 200 of her records), nor for her pro-IRA sympathies. "Ireland is like a lost mother. We lost our language and our history to the English. And we go around feeling that pain every minute", she explained regarding "Famine", denouncing the British oppression behind the tragedy of the 1847 famine and calling for Irish reunification and an end to violence.

Her most recent interviews, by contrast, have been obsessively focused on the subject of her sexuality, with contradictory results. "I've been to bed with women, but I'm much more attracted to men", she told "Hot Press". "I'm a lesbian, although I've had a lot of difficulty accepting it until now", she revealed shortly after to "Curve". The doubt is settled by the single taken from her 2000 album, Faith And Courage: "No Man's Woman", co-written with Scott Cutler and Anne Preven, the writers of Natalie Imbruglia's "Thorn". In the video, the "no man's woman" is a bride who flees in despair at the moment she's asked to say "I do", and is rescued by a group of unlikely Rastafarians. But it's not a j'accuse against the male sex: "It's just the thought of a moment; the record, on the contrary, pays tribute to men and is produced by men". Indeed, many sound wizards contributed to it: Brian Eno above all, and then Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), Wyclef Jean and Adrian Sherwood. The result can be heard in the richness of the arrangements and in the pleasures of tracks like "Jealous" or "The Lamb's Book Of Life". And yet there's a sense that Sinéad O'Connor is slowly letting the sacred fire that marked her debut die down. Her voice, its dissonant high notes now softened, has turned into a refined whisper. But it can still ignite an emotion, a tremor of life, in every song — perhaps because her confessions are so true to life that they stir feeling even in the most detached of listeners.

Faith And Courage is born, above all, out of a yearning for peace. "It's a work about the soul, a spiritual, religious record", Sinéad explains. "The underlying musical idea is to reconcile Irish tradition with reggae. But there's pop in there too, because after so many serious moments I felt like having fun". And indeed, Sinéad O'Connor has always lived amid drama — from the traumas of a childhood marked by violence and loneliness, to more recent ones, culminating in the kidnapping of her daughter Roisin and the legal custody battle with the girl's father, Irish Times journalist John Waters. Years lived dangerously, which also drove her to two (half-hearted) suicide attempts. Anyone who loves music regardless of personal sympathies cannot fail to recognise the profound influence the Dublin singer-songwriter has had on an entire generation of singers, of whom her fellow countrywoman Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries is merely the most famous. What remains, though, is the regret of seeing one of the most supple and expressive vocalists in rock history let down by songs not always worthy of her talent.

In the grip of a creative crisis, Sinéad takes refuge in covers. First she dusts off a handful of Irish traditionals on Sean-Nos Nua (2002), which features a vibrant rendition of "Molly Malone". Then, under the outlandish title She Who Dwells In the Secret Place Of The Most High Shall Abide Under The Shadow Of The Almighty (2003), the Dublin singer gathers together more covers, eclectic to say the least — from The B-52's ("Ain't It A Shame") to ABBA ("Chiquitita") to Aretha Franklin ("Do Right Woman") — collaborations with other artists (Massive Attack on "It's All Good" and Asian Dub Foundation on "1000 Mirrors"), excellent live re-recordings of some of her signature songs, and assorted oddities. That same year, her voice also shines on the Massive Attack album "100th Window".

2005 brings Throw Down Your Arms, a curious album made up entirely of strict covers of traditional Rastafari reggae songs, an influence that had already become increasingly tangible in her music since her previous album of original material. Among the tracks chosen is also Bob Marley's "War", the very song she sang on Saturday Night Live shortly before the famous torn-photo incident. Recorded in Kingston, Jamaica, with the legendary reggae production duo Sly & Robbie, the album is well received by critics and, despite scant publicity due to its independent release and its highly unusual concept, manages to find more than a few devoted fans. From that point on, though, silence falls over the Irish singer-songwriter, who announces she wants to retire from recording. Then, in 2007, comes the surprise.

With the double album Theology, Sinéad is still here, reminding us that one of the most important vocalists of the last twenty years cannot be dismissed so easily. Granted, this collection of hymns and "chamber" prayers, often just voice and guitar, might look like yet another reckless gesture, made all the more so by its grandiose intentions ("My main interest is to liberate God, to rescue Him from religion"). Instead, more than ever before, Sinéad seems to have made peace with herself and to have genuinely wanted to follow only her own inspiration, as she repeated while presenting the project.

The first CD, "Dublin Session", presents the songs in acoustic form; the second, "London Session", adds full-band arrangements. This updated reading of psalms, hymns and verses from the Old Testament is rounded out by eight original songs and three covers: a soul version of Curtis Mayfield's "We People Who Are Darker Than Blue", the traditional reggae spiritual "Rivers Of Babylon" (with revised and corrected lyrics), and a rendition — admittedly rather flat and disappointing — of "I Don't Know How To Love Him", the gorgeous ballad from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's "Jesus Christ Superstar", made famous by Yvonne Elliman in the role of Mary Magdalene.

The acoustic disc, recorded with the accompaniment of Irish folkster Steve Cooney, is perhaps more evocative, even if it suffers from a certain flatness in the delivery (Sinéad, alas, now travels only in her most subdued, hushed register), while the electric side (produced by Ron Tom) offers a bit more charge but at times sounds muddled and uncertain in its arrangements. Still, the opening "Something Beautiful" alone, as intense and aching as in the old days, or the one-two punch of the driving semi-acoustic ballads "Out Of The Depths" and "The Glory Of Jah", would be enough to kick-start the resurrection that admirers of the girl with the warm tears of "Nothing Compares 2 U" have never stopped dreaming of.

Though she's spent years struggling with devastating personal wounds and family rifts still open, Dublin's passionate crusader has never lost her spiritual restlessness and fierce candor. The result is an honest, sincere record, but probably more useful to her than to us.

The calm she reached, however, was only apparent, and her troubles kept piling up in the years that followed: depression, psychiatric drugs that bloated her, disfiguring that perfect face which everyone still prefers to associate with that voice, a new lightning-fast marriage and, it seems, yet another suicide attempt, all following one another in a short span of time and filling the pages of the tabloids.

Yet these many unpleasant ordeals don't stop her from planning the most carefully considered comeback of her recent years, buoyed by a genuine dose of inspiration, with an album that comes across as anything but downcast, starting with the opening track, a "4th And Vine" that immediately wraps you in its ethno-folk warmth and a buoyant melody guaranteed to lift the spirits.

The only snapshot of yet another troubled period seems to be the anguished "Reason With Me", which O'Connor sings in a state of grief, almost forcing it out of herself, and in doing so making it all the more moving, avoiding the trap of becoming just another lighter-waving ballad. "I don't want to waste the life God gave me" she sings, stepping into the shoes of an addict, and it's on this premise, this retracing of her steps, that How About I Be Me (And You Be You)? is born — the album she would have done better to make back in the '90s, in an effort to get her shaky career back on track. Having set aside Irish traditionals, her reggae infatuations and her flirtations with electronics, the new record returns to the rock immediacy of her early days, beefing up the essential formula of the previous, lackluster Theology, and inevitably ending up sounding like a restoration job.

Years earlier, the proud pop of "The Wolf Is Getting Married", with its British-style chiseling and sweeping melodic opening, would become one of her biggest radio hits, and the lean "Old Lady", with even grittier guitars, would probably have followed close behind. But what strikes hardest, for its pronounced flashback effect, is the tormented march of "Take Off Your Shoes", whose leaden litany is gradually electrified by O'Connor's vocals, sharp as a blade and as defiant as we hadn't heard in a long time, as she launches yet another invective against the clergy. More conventional is the course of "Back Where You Belong", which unspools a romantic, heartfelt melody over a soft little march, and which, together with the not too dissimilar but less flashy "Very Far From Home", finds its strength in a caressing delivery. Less sharply focused, perhaps, are the vibrant "I Had A Baby", carried by a guitar nervousness reminiscent of The Edge that nonetheless doesn't stop it from limping forward, and the tamed cover of John Grant's "Queen Of Denmark", here stripped of its theatrical piano pathos in favor of a more traditional contrast between acoustic verses and rocking crescendos, in which her voice nonetheless takes on unexpected new colors.

Closing the album is the inevitable a cappella prayer, a heartfelt "V.I.P." further softened at the end by a laconic piano, in which she once again criticizes the falseness of showbiz and the role of pop stars.

For those who have followed every step of her career, How About I Be Me (And You Be You)? adds little to her journey but still knows how to entertain with style, while for all those who had given up on her twenty years ago, it has the merit of presenting a Sinéad O'Connor who's grown a bit more settled but is nonetheless still in fine form.

The media exposure Sinéad O'Connor was subjected to in the months that followed is almost unbelievable. Granted, it's not always her music that draws the most attention (as has often been the case throughout her career), and what's driving it is a remarkable return to psycho-physical form that only three years earlier had seemed impossible, along with her online skirmishes with pop starlet Miley Cyrus, whom she warned against letting herself be exploited by an increasingly pimp-like showbiz (only for Cyrus to later adopt her sexiest look yet to re-present herself to the wider public).

And yet, with her stock on the rise again thanks to the excellent critical reception of her previous album and the success of the tour, O'Connor is more determined than ever to win back a wider audience, even at the cost of smoothing out some rough edges and giving up her by-now trademark tendency to experiment with wildly different genres. And so, to achieve that goal, along comes I'm Not Bossy, I'm The Boss, her most hyped album since the ill-fated Faith And Courage, and one with which she also seems to have far more in common than with her classics.

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