Sinéad O’Connor was Misunderstood, Underrated and Ahead of Her Time

There was always something deeper going on under the surface with Sinéad O’Connor. From the moment she burst into the mainstream with the worldwide smash single “Nothing Compares 2 U,” the Irish singer-songwriter was both a curiosity and lightning rod for controversy. When news spread of O’Connor’s death at the age of just 56 years old this week, a cause had yet to be disclosed at press time, all those old speculations and analyzations came to the forefront.

Here in America, she is widely considered a one-hit wonder who sabotaged her career by ripping up a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live. A chart-topping, Grammy-winning sensation who went from celebrated to castigated in the blink of an eye.

Elsewhere in the world, O’Connor is recognized as an uncompromising singer and musician held in the highest of regard who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind about a wide range of injustices, a deeply spiritual woman who struggled with a series of mental health issues. Just last year, she lost her 17-year-old son Shane to suicide.

At the time of her breakthrough in 1990 with the Prince penned “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and the No. 1 album from which it came, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, O’Connor was already familiar to listeners of college radio. She had a minor hit with the 1987 song “Mandinka,” from the LP The Lion and the Cobra, and even appeared on the 1989 Grammy Awards telecast performing as an emerging artist nominated for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Even then, with the logo of controversial rap outfit Public Enemy – a Black man in the crosshairs of a gun scope – etched into the side of her shaved head, she stood out.

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It was “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and more pointedly the video gaining heavy rotation on MTV, that pushed O’Connor to the forefront of public consciousness. The clip primarily features a closeup of the singer’s face as she lip-syncs to her hauntingly vulnerable take on the track, with tears spilling down her cheeks by the final chorus. That openness endeared her to millions, who snatched up the single, the record and launched her into the stratosphere of popularity.

“‘Sinéad O’Connor’ was never meant to be a pop star,” she told Today in 2021, chortling. “[She] was really a protest singer, you know?”

The latter was the intent in October 1992 when, just a week and a half following the release of her new album, O’Connor appeared on SNL. A last-minute changeup prior to her second performance of the night saw her sing the Bob Marley song “War” a cappella, after which she held up a picture of Pope John Paul II, ripped it into six pieces, stared into the camera and bellowed, “Fight the real enemy.”

The incident set off a firestorm, with the most outspoken and those with a voice claiming it was an attack on Catholics everywhere, religion in general and a pope who, by most accounts, was a really good guy who didn’t deserve to have his picture torn to shreds. The reality was much different, as O’Connor was taking a stand against the atrocities and abuse committed by the Catholic Church, many of which were years away from being common knowledge in the States.

“Our loss of contact with historical truth has resulted in the highest manifestation of the disease of evil which is child abuse, which is also the root of all evil,” O’Connor said in a statement two weeks after the event. “This is what we need to fight and why I am fighting.”

It was too little, too late and even with hindsight proving her correct in her assertion that something was amiss within the confines of Catholic houses of worship around the world where abuse was taking place and had been for decades, O’Connor’s career was destroyed.

Not only did she receive death threats and suffer widespread television and radio boycotts long before cancel culture had a name, but the album she was promoting, Am I Not Your Girl?, quickly fell off the charts. Her subsequent releases were branded failures in America, but due to the sheer brazenness of her forms of protest – including a 1990 incident in New Jersey where she refused to go onstage if the national anthem was played beforehand – she was still apt to make an appearance in the gossip pages whenever she did something newsworthy.

Typically made the punchline of jokes, O’Connor was chastised when she spoke about destigmatizing mental illness, touched on gender fluidity when she came out as a lesbian then seemingly backtracked, telling Entertainment Weekly, “I’m three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay.” She continually refused to hold back on hot button topics like politics, religion and in 2013 – four years before the #MeToo movement – warned Miley Cyrus in an open letter about being sexualized and taken advantage of in the music industry.

Looking back, whether through reading her often disturbing, heart wrenching and revealing 2021 memoir Rememberings or viewing last year’s outstanding Showtime documentary Nothing Compares, it’s clear Sinéad O’Connor was well ahead of her time on so many social issues that eventually became front page news.

And when it comes to the songs, by turning her into a caricature, the media at large did a disservice to music lovers who may have missed out on some true classics, evidenced in a three-album stretch in the early ‘00s that was nothing short of brilliant.

Released almost a decade to the day from the SNL fiasco, 2002’s Sean-Nós Nua was O’Connor’s masterful take on traditional Irish folk songs, replete with fiddles, whistles and accordions. Three years later, she put out her first reggae LP, Thrown Down Your Arms, which closed out with a more traditional rendition of Marley’s “War.” Then in 2007, O’Connor mixed covers with originals on the double album Theology, with one record acoustic, subtitled “Dublin Sessions” and a full-band long player dubbed “London Sessions.”

Do yourself a favor and dig into her catalog, one that’s winding, deep and full of mysteries to uncover. Some of the music is complex and mournful, bewildering and more often than not heartbreaking, but like the woman herself, always honest.

A version of this article appears in this week’s print and online editions of my syndicated Rock Music Menu column under the title “Sinéad O’Connor was misunderstood, underrated and ahead of her time.”