‘If they hated me they will hate you’: Sinéad O’Connor remains an anomaly in Irish music
THU, 27 JUL, 2023–16:00
by LINDA COOGAN-BYRNE AND ÁINE TYRELL
(original post from Irish Examiner).
In the wake of Sinéad O’Connor’s untimely passing, where do we start? We have lost our banríon. Truth teller. A visionary.
If you grew up in Ireland in the ’80s and ’90s, Sinéad’s ethereal voice likely accompanied your youth. The tears were streaming down her cheeks as we watched her breathtaking cover of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ captivate a world audience.
Sinéad lived a pluralistic existence. Despite our fears and shame, she spoke the words many of us could not. The dark truth guided her to light and in turn helped us free ourselves from a country dominated and condemned by the secrecies of the Church and State that seeped into the very fabric of Irish society.
There was a seismic shift whenever Sinéad spoke. While teenagers and young people were soaking in every note of hers on the radio and TV, the small-town talk around the kitchen tables of adults were whispering a different tune.
Their dirty rumble was the opposite to what our souls knew to be true of Sinéad. Growing up in the ’80s, ’90s, and beyond, had us young girls have to bear witness to not only the witch hunt of Sinéad, but the slow disintegration of the rich history of Irish warrior women.
Our kitchen radios warned us to be quiet, careful, pious, calm, good girls. We were warned of Sinéad’s madness, instability, her dangerous politics, her attention-seeking ways.
We watched her be belittled, chewed up, and spat out by not only the worldwide media but by her very own, our own country which she loved with every cell.
“If they hated me they will hate you”. We knew, all knew, what she meant… While many of us stayed rebellious, bold, wild, and free because of Sinéad, we always had to keep one eye peering over our shoulders for the ever-present voice of the Church and the State telling us how we as women were supposed to be.
Some of us eventually stopped singing, some of us emigrated, and some of us turned quiet because we saw what they did to Sinéad.
She never shied away from controversy, regardless of the consequences. Discussions about her mental health were frequent. She was accompanied by a narrative throughout her career as the hysterical and crazy one — something thrown at every woman in history who has been unafraid to speak out.
She was at risk of cancellation every time she spoke out. Her fearlessness and integrity allowed her to tell the truth anyway. Women who speak out are always regarded as dangerous. When she tore up a picture of the Pope in 1992, she spoke out against abuse in the Catholic church, something that had not been discussed openly in Irish homes or in the media until then.
During an episode of Saturday Night Live in October 1992, Sinéad did not perform her most famous song. In its place, she covered Bob Marley’s ‘War,’ editing the lyrics to emphasise child abuse instead of racism.
Four decades on, Sinéad remains an anomaly in the Irish music industry, as no other female artist has gained widespread recognition in Ireland other than the late Dolores O’Riordan and her band the Cranberries.
Sinéad and Dolores remain the most frequently played women on Irish radio in the last five years. The Corrs occasionally make an appearance.
Between 2015 and 2018, only nine Irish chart entries reached the top 10, and just one of these was by a woman. An Irish woman hadn’t been seen as a lead artist in the top spot since 2009, until this year when Jazzy’s chart position marked the first time an Irish female act topped the official Irish singles chart in over 14 years.
Irish male artists or bands accounted for 78.3% of hit singles in the last 20 years. Women and BIPOC artists are systematically excluded from Irish radio. Nowadays, there are very few anomalies like Sinéad. Radio still has a homogenised sonic landscape of men.
Yet while Irish radio continues to play mostly white male artists on air, the women of Ireland’s music scene will continue to see ourselves, our traumas, our lived experiences, our Catholic upbringings, our narratives in all she sang and all she stood for, and we will not stop or be silenced anymore.
The legacy for us Irish women is to step up and fill her immense Doc Martens.
Her music, lyricism, art, and even her spiritual journey were innovative. The fact she was right to rip up the picture of the Pope and expose the harsh realities of what was going on behind closed doors was irrelevant. She was deemed, mad, and unpredictable, causing the “end of her career”.
It was not uncommon for O’Connor to be parodied in popular culture. Her career was at risk every time she raised her voice. Women who speak out against systematic oppression are vilified and dangerous. Would Bob Dylan have been cancelled if he did the same? We all know the answer to that.
Despite the fact the Prince cover established her as a major the hit-maker, Sinéad has said she didn’t feel the need to be liked by others or accepted by the music industry.
She said previously: “I’m not a pop star. I’m just a troubled soul who needs to scream into a mic now and then. I don’t need to be number one.”
The defiance she always possessed has inspired many that came after her, but very few have dared to go as far as she did.
She passed down so much for us to learn from, but maybe we also need to look back upstream and examine how we failed Sinéad? She deserved better and we all deserve better.
We need to hold the media and industry to account moving forward in how we allow them to speak about women and marginalised voices. We as Irish women and other voices need to be at these tables so a narrative like Sinéad’s can be held sacred now. We can exalt her as the Queen she is to us.
We, as a society, didn’t heal quickly enough alongside her, we are only catching up now and now we can be the change. For too long the male gaze and patriarchal media have held dangerous narratives about our gentle fearless truth-teller who used her talent and music to heal not only our country but the world.
She saw into dark corners and shone light into what needed to be seen for us all to move forward.
The void she leaves is as immense and intimate as the impact just one big note from her small frame could have on your soul. No other singer could command a sound to reverberate around your cells and carry you through pasts, presents, and futures all at the same time like Sinéad.
To witness her live was to enter a universe and the entire universe now seems immeasurably empty knowing that we won’t have that space with her mastery again.
Sinéad said to us in a tweet: ‘Mise Éire’ and was she ever. She was a reflection of all the complexities of Ireland in our strength, resilience, wounds, traumas, healing, ancestral wisdoms, past, present and future.
Thank you Sinéad, for hearing and speaking up for us, when our fear silenced us. You challenged a society that stifled women, children, and anyone who didn’t conform to the norm.
As a result of your power, anger, pain, and fragility, many survivors were inspired to speak out, including us both. Your songs will continue to inspire generations of us to come. Nothing and no one will ever compare to you. Grá mór.
- Linda Coogan Byrne is founder of WhyNotHer? and a music publicist. Áine Tyrrell is an award-winning musician, singer, and activist
