These Lonely Tears

Sinead was right. All along. She was right. Sinead O’Connor’s tragic death at age 56 yesterday should remind us all what an otherworldly talent she was, what a fearless truth teller she was, and what embarrassment we should all feel about how our culture at-large treated her for that talent, that fearlessness and that truth telling.

I fell in love with Sinead, like so many others, when her unadorned face and unwavering eyes burrowed into me with “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and she has been a life-long favorite ever since. She was, in fact, the first live concert I ever went to (Peter Gabriel was there too but, you know, whatever). I still know all the lyrics to all the songs on “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” verbatim. Her exquisite freight train of a voice could be all iron or all gossamer or somehow both at once. At times it felt like she was pulling from another dimension altogether.

Yes, everyone talks about her 1992 “Saturday Night Live” performance when she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II while imploring us all to “Fight the real enemy” in protest over the then not-yet widely uncovered rampant child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. For the so-called sin of being too right too soon, she was banned for life from SNL and NBC and became a public pariah and universal punching bag.

The Catholic Church, it should be noted, did not issue a formal generalized apology to all Catholics worldwide for its at least seven-decade-long legacy of covering up unchecked child sexual abuse until 2018 — yes, 2018! Previous apologies were all specific to individual countries around the world where they covered up sex crimes, as one does in the name of the Lord apparently. By the Vatican’s own conservative estimates, hundreds of thousands of children were abused by the Church. That apology letter came 26 years after Sinead first sounded the alarm — more than a quarter century later. Damn.

Less than two weeks after her SNL protest (which sparked insane backlash and hate and all the other bullshit people do when art makes them uncomfortable), she played a Bob Dylan tribute concert at Madison Square Garden in New York. When she came out on stage, the amassed audience jeered and booed her for almost three minutes straight as she stood stone-faced. Then she launched into a righteous a capella version of Bob Marley’s “War” and strode off the stage.

Kris Kristofferon famously was the only other artist to come on stage to offer any comfort as the hatred rained down on her from the crowd. By his own telling, this is what he said transpired:

“Don’t let the bastards get you down,” I told her.
“I’m not down,” she replied.

Then she told them to turn up her mic, ripped out her ear monitors and fucking wailed.

The Catholic Church scandal wasn’t the only time Sinead was prescient. She protested the playing of the American anthem before her concerts. She protested police brutality and killings. She protested sexual harassment. She protested the racism, sexism, and materialism of the Grammys/recording industry. She protested fucking war. She protested injustice and suffering, seemingly everywhere.

For all that, Sinead became probably the first modern celebrity to be canceled — well before we had ever heard of the term cancel culture. Still, through it all, she was stunningly clear-eyed and painfully self-aware. She has been excruciatingly honest about her own many mistakes and struggles, from her PTSD stemming from childhood abuse to her bipolar disorder and everything else. I worried for her when I heard about her 17-year-old son’s suicide last year, I really did. Nothing can stop these lonely tears from falling.

But she expressed absolutely, positively no regrets whatsoever about the act that supposedly ended her career.

In 2021 she told The Guardian when they asked if her act of protest against the Catholic Church had defined her career:

“Yes, in a beautiful fucking way. There was no doubt about who this bitch is. There was no more mistaking this woman for a pop star. But it was not derailing; people say, ‘Oh, you fucked up your career’ but they’re talking about the career they had in mind for me. I fucked up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I fucked up their career, not mine. It meant I had to make my living playing live, and I am born for live performance.”

Instead she called herself a protest singer, and that is what she will remain for eternity. Read her interviews, any of them, and you’ll come away deeply impressed and likely deeply moved by her intellect, her openness, her vulnerability and her conviction. Plus she was damn funny, too. So Irish, being able to hold untold tragedy inside her while still being charismatic as all get out.

Also, just to be deeply, shamelessly superficial for a moment, she was so breathtakingly beautiful. All that bravery and fierceness packed into this tiny package of raw energy and pure heart. And, of course, her hair or lack thereof. God, she was hot. So fucking hot.

Also, that thing flapping in the back pocket of her ripped jeans above her stomping Docs during her first-ever primetime American TV performance? It was her infant son Jake’s onesie. She wore it as a fuck you to record execs who had told her motherhood wasn’t good for her career.

Oh yeah, and she was queer. Her sexual fluidity, her search for spirituality, her endless quest to understand herself and our collective humanity was worn like a badge for anyone to see. Her refusal to be the pretty pop star they wanted her to be made her a threat. See how much society hates women who won’t conform. That bald head. Those unapologetic opinions. That unrelenting voice.

They pilloried her for it all. But she seemed made from the stuff of the witches they could not burn. So her sudden passing leaves a void, leaves the world a little less brave, a little less honest.

I pulled out all of my old Sinead CDs (yes, I still keep my CDs, heck — I still have some tapes!) yesterday to listen to them again and again. I also went down so many YouTube rabbit holes — as you can no doubt tell. So many live performances still reverberate like little earthquakes. So alive, and so aware of all the indescribable beauty and unexplainable cruelty of this world. If they hated me, they will hate you.

It’s true, we humans only have one ending, and it’s coming for us all sooner or later. I wish it had been so much later for Sinead. I wish she died of righteous old age still raging for what is right and using her instrument against what’s wrong. But may her memory be a blessing for every victimized person, for every brutalized person, for everyone who has ever been an outcast or cast out. May her music watch over all of us who deserve grace, and even for those who don’t. Except Andrew Dice Clay, because fuck that guy.

Thank you, Sinead. I will love you and your music forever and beyond. Rest in power, and hopefully finally peace. Truly, nothing compared to you. Who knows if anyone will again.