Music

‘The music industry wanted a Dublin Edith Piaf. They got Sinéad O’Connor instead’

People advised her to ‘just shut up and sing’. But there was no separating the singer from the song

Sinéad O' Connor performing at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, in 2011. Photograph: Collins

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Brian Boyd
Sat Jul 29 2023 - 05:00

It’s not every day you get to introduce Sinéad O’Connor to John Lydon, so memories of a day in September 2010 endure for this writer. That weekend I had interviewed Sex Pistol John Lydon for The Irish Times. In characteristic combative fashion, Lydon had been railing against the violence he endured at the hands of Irish nuns in his early schooldays.

He said: “Horrible Irish nuns, vindictive and cruel. And when the priests came, even back then I knew what they were up to in terms of abuse. I was thinking about all of this when I saw Sinéad O’Connor on CNN talking about Irish clerical abuse. And to think people dismissed her... I think the world of Sinéad O’Connor.”

Sinéad O’Connor got in touch with me later, to get John Lydon’s contact details. Our talk turned to perhaps her most overlooked song – and one of her very best – Black Boys on Mopeds from the album that made her a global icon, 1990′s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.

Decades before the brutal deaths of Trayvon Martin and George Floyd prompted global soul-searching, O’Connor had written Black Boys on Mopeds, about an event that took place in London close to where O’Connor lived at the time. A young black man who was going home on his moped was chased by police, crashed and died of his injuries. The song contained these lyrics:

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“England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses

It’s the home of police who kill blacks boys on mopeds

And I love my boy and that’s why I’m leaving

I don’t want him to be aware that there’s

Any such thing as grieving.”

She found it baffling that, though her album was number one in several countries, all focus was on her cover version of Nothing Compares 2 U – and Black Boys on Mopeds was seldom mentioned.

When she sang it was a catharsis for the pain she felt inside – a psychic hurt that she said took root when her mother was abusive to her as a child

The poet Benjamin Zephaniah was a friend of O’Connor’s; they appeared on a single together. He once said: “It is the duty of artists to spark discussions and create work that serves as a catharsis for pain and a catalyst for questions that need answering.”

O’Connor fulfilled that duty on both counts. When she sang it was a catharsis for the pain she felt inside – a psychic hurt that she said took root when her mother was abusive to her as a child.

Tragic chanteuse

O’Connor also used her music to ask questions she thought needed answering, on subjects including racism, Irish nationalism, US imperialism and the Catholic Church’s cover-ups of child abuse.

This wasn’t what most of the music business wanted. They wanted a compliant, tragic chanteuse, a sort of Dublin Edith Piaf, to sing big-selling sad ballads with tears streaming down her face.

In Among School Children, WB Yeats asked: “How can we tell the dancer from the dance?” – advancing the idea that a creative act is intimately connected with the artist and that separating the two is impossible. With Sinéad O’Connor, you could never tell the singer from the song.

She wasn’t just vocalising her songs – she was bringing her experiences and her hurt to the microphone. She found it contradictory when people advised her to “just shut up and sing”. For her, the emotional delivery was indivisible from the subject matter she was singing about. Her sexuality, her politics, her spiritual quests and her relationships bled into her creativity. The singer was the song.

Her music was characterised by an artistic reaching that saw sean-nós battle with reggae, hip-hop beats meet post-punk guitar lines, and vocals dovetail perfectly with searing lyrics. We never could tell the dancer from the dance or the singer from the song.

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