Sinead O'Connor: C/D?

she was only 20 when lion and the cobra came out, and she'd already lived so much

Search: The Gospel Oak EP (1997). A gorgeous little collection (Josh linked its best song above).

ALL her stuff is worth hearing, there are good songs everywhere. So sad to hear this, really hits hard not least because to follow her for the past 36 years has been to necessarily immerse yourself in her emotional landscape and — often — to sense how much pain underlay it. Has there ever been a Sinead fan who didn't understand how hard happiness was for her to find, and who didn't wish it for her?

I really worried about her after her son died last year. I was afraid it would be too much for her. R.I.P.

So glad I did get to see her in 1990, she was mesmerizing, one of my top 10 shows.

guys, I’m so sad. she deserved a lot better. what a fucking genius.

guys, I’m so sad. she deserved a lot better. what a fucking genius.

She was right. About everything.

Damn right she was.

this is one of the old posts that is nice to read now:

I remember never once being able to turn away from the vid for "Nothing Compares 2 U" no matter how many sqaudrillion times it had been played on MTV. I remember it stopping my step-father dead in his tracks.....rendering him positively still and silent until its finish. "Hot damn!" he said softly, afterwards.
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, March 4, 2005 8:57 PM (eighteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

wow....

https://heavenlyrecordings.bandcamp.com/track/trouble-of-the-world-a-cappella

"The Emperor's New Clothes" has one of my favorite fadeouts.

What a great spiritual for her style

A more or less apolitical Canadian child during the 80s and on into the very early 90s, Sinead taught me that Thatcher sucked even before I learned that Reagan sucked.

("As a...")

And it's worth emphasizing: she produced her fucking debut album on her own.

godddamn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wMZvznTTGg

Some tributes being collected here, from the prime minister of Ireland to Ice-T

https://deadline.com/2023/07/sinead-oconnor-tributes-reactions-billy-corgan-outlander-susanna-hoffs-1235448768/

Alfred, yes, I was just playing the first two albums again and marveling at the last couple minutes of that song...

I always loved Jump in the River, which is the lead track on the Married to the Mob soundtrack. Something about it really sounds ahead of its time.

I love her electric guitar on "Jump in the River."

Fiercely honest and sweet and funny, she was talented in ways I’m not sure she completely understood.

oh fuck you Billy Corgan

yeah I noticed that

here is what someone who isn't a loser would say

Respect to Sinead….. She stood for something… Unlike most people…. Rest Easy..🙏🏽 https://t.co/3nbO3w22zv

— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) July 26, 2023

A heroic figure. rip.

I play the lion and the cobra all the time. Very few albums go as hard as that one.

“And you should’ve let the light onnnnn” fuck I’m so depressed

Fiercely honest and sweet and funny, she was talented in ways I’m not sure she completely understood.

oh fuck you Billy Corgan

― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, July 26, 2023 9:48 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

He was not talented in ways i'm sure he never understood at all.

lol

don't know what to write at all, just chiming in to say how saddened i am by this just like all of you. the lion and the cobra was such an important record for me in the first year that i started caring about music. a friend of mine and i would write various lyrics from it on notes that we would pass to each other in school. just straight out writing the lyrics down. why? it felt powerful somehow to write the words she sang. her songs were like incantations. spells. and they worked! they summoned these feelings from deep down inside me. they still do. i'm scared of her records. i don't put them on much. i can't handle the rawness, how i know i'm going to feel when i listen to them.

oh man no. I'd been thinking about her this week.

mum saw her at the Port Fairy Folk Festival in Australia a few/many years back - i remember mum just complained that she “talked too much” between songs and “why can’t she just sing”

hmm yes but also counterpoint why can’t YOU stay home & listen to the album if you’d prefer not to engage w a human performer its such a dilemma roll my damn eyes all the way back forever to my own grave lol

She deserved better from the world. RIP

this is just heartbreaking. rest in peace, Sinead.

I've been playing a lot of her 'featured artist' singles this evening - no slur on her own work, once you've written Troy you have nothing to prove, but a) they are her own work too and b) I loved how generous she was with her amazing voice, and how she would lend it to often nakedly political stuff. I won't bombard you with YouTubes, but consider visiting or revisiting 1000 Mirrors (with Asian Dub Foundation), A Prayer for England (with Massive Attack), Empire (with Bomb The Bass and Benjamin Zephaniah) and from 1991 Visions of You with Jah Wobble:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuG1JN_pIUU
(also Haunted with Shane McGowan, just because I love a soppy love song)

"A Prayer for England" is an imprecation whispered in the ear of every prime minister.

I also really really love this version of "Haunted," with Trevor Horn production and a video all optimistically designed to make it a hit. It should've been!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q7307IWwr4

Her final live performance was February 12, 2020 in Santa Cruz, CA at a small theater.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwluxHHP1vU

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/sinead-oconnor/2020/rio-theatre-santa-cruz-ca-6b98362a.html

I'm also upset. Just chiming in to say that when I heard the Lion and the Cobra at 13 years old, I was astounded. I'll admit that it informed my vision of a future girlfriend. The shaved head and passion. And I guess she was really pretty. It sounds dumb, but I'm just channeling 13-year-old me.

she absolutely deserved so much better

the lion and the cobra is such a fantastic album, one of a kind

RIP. She was a force to be reckoned with. One of a kind.

I'm also upset. Just chiming in to say that when I heard the Lion and the Cobra at 13 years old, I was astounded. I'll admit that it informed my vision of a future girlfriend. The shaved head and passion. And I guess she was really pretty. It sounds dumb, but I'm just channeling 13-year-old me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n14lwdpYkAA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=318ZDSy3zn4

Black Boys on Mopeds certainly made me lose it today.

this is it for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcO0fEabWHI

Listening to I Do Not Want right now — which I don't actually listen to that much, Lion & Cobra is kind of my Sinead go-to — and it is so good. The songs are great, the arrangements are great, and she is such an amazingly present singer. So vibrant and intimate. And I've heard this album hundreds of times, I know all that, but it doesn't fade with familiarity.

Heartbreaking. I haven't even looked at the news yet, but given her struggles over many years, I imagine it's what's been feared for a very long time. Absolutely love her music, and it was wonderful to see something like a resurgence over the past decade as people re-discovered her work or re-evaluated what they overlooked. (There was a stretch in the '00s where I felt like no one I knew ever talked about her, much less put on her records, which was remarkable for someone who had been a household name not too long ago.)

She was probably my favorite singer of the past 40 years, for that amazing voice and for the way she could get inside a song and make it sound like her own thoughts and words, but she's so much more than her records. She never let popularity re-define what she should be or what she should say through her work, and she spoke up LOUDLY for a lot of children who needed it when the world refused to listen. I wish that brought her enough solace, but it meant a hell of a lot to so many people.

Re: Gospel Oak, I especially like this one (though it was released elsewhere too):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GDT-3pARec

Faith and Courage is probably worth revisiting too. "Jealous," "No Man's Woman" and "Daddy I'm Fine" are favorites.

Beth Orton’s Instagram post will burn you.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvLU4kxNd9Q/

Was looking for video from those that went with all the tracks on Red Hot & Blue, but this keeps turning up, from I Do Not Want..., hopefully the same take:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK9dtZSIj-U

Terrific tribute by Dave Holmes: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a44655422/sinead-oconnor-death-tribute/