Daily Archive

I’m sad to learn that Sinéad O’Connor (Shuhada’ Sadaqat) has died. She was just a little older than I am.

I was at the 1992 “Bobfest” (officially the 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, for Bob Dylan) in Madison Square Garden, when she got up to sing “I Believe in You,” but was booed mercilessly by the crowd. She had torn up a photo of the pope on live television some time earlier, singing “War” by Bob Marley and citing child abuse. So she was controversial, but I was disgusted by the people booing. They seemed to lean gleefully into a sense of having been personally insulted by her, as if they were all devout Catholics and the pope were their spiritual father. It is wildly unlikely that many of them were more than nominally Catholic.

Kris Kristofferson came and put an arm around her and tried to help her carry on, but she ditched the song she had planned, sang a few lines of “War” again, and stalked offstage. It was a shame, because “I Believe in You” would have made a great response. It’s about sticking to your beliefs despite persecution and doubt, and its statement of faith is obviously Christian to anyone who knows Dylan’s history. But she was very young. Imagine being booed by even a small minority of the crowd at a packed Garden.

Ever since the stories about the abuse by the Catholic Church, including the extensive cover-up by the pope in question (John Paul II), I’ve thought a whole lot of people owed O’Connor an apology. If she ever got one, it didn’t get nearly the publicity that their condemnations of her had.

As for her singing, I wasn’t attentive enough to be a particular fan. I liked what I knew of her music, but never bought any albums. The one recording of hers that I owned was her rendition of “You Do Something to Me” on Red Hot + Blue, a compilation of Cole Porter covers by contemporary artists, made as an AIDS benefit. I love Cole Porter. I listened to that CD a lot (still do), and a few of the tracks are real standouts for me, none more than hers. That song has been recorded by some of the greatest–Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra–and O’Connor made it all new. If you’ve never heard it, give yourself a treat.

I’m not sure what “rest in peace” even means, but I don’t think she found a lot of peace in life, so I hope she is at peace at last.