I remember when I smashed my cassette tape of I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, after Sinéad O’Connor tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on live TV in 1992. It was a time when Catholicism still enjoyed a default position of respect from the world, instead of today’s default scorn and suspicion, so when the world’s entertainment overlords blacklisted her for it, when a packed Madison Square Garden booed her to tears . . . my little gesture of retribution didn’t amount to much. But it made me feel angrily righteous.
Thirty years later, and a day after O’Connor died at fifty-six, I just feel sad. First, because she was an artist of unfulfilled potential. She had amazing pipes, able to switch effortlessly from breathy and vulnerable to throaty and snarling and back again—with a lilting accent that made GenX American fanboys of arty alt-rock songstresses (like moi) gush. And she had presence, with her signature shaved or close-cropped head framing wide, expressive eyes. All of which combined to produce her career apotheosis at only twenty-four: the music video for megahit Nothing Compares 2 U.
But second, and mostly, because she was a pitiable mess of a human being. Her life choices were to blame for some of this, of course—we’re all free to choose good or evil, life or death—but she also was a victim of things beyond her control. Her parents’ divorce when she was a child; physical, sexual, and emotional abuse from trusted figures; men and managers who exploited her beauty, insecurity, and talent. Her own divorces, abortions, tragic losses, and self-destructive behaviors seem to me a case study in the ripple effects of sin—beginning with the root evil of family dissolution.
It’s popular at this moment to compare O’Connor with her countrywoman Dolores O’Riordan, lead singer of the Cranberries who accidentally drowned while under the influence of multiple substances in 2018. Both were formed in an Irish Catholic milieu. Both were victims of abuse, and suffered from mental illness and the lingering effects of trauma throughout their lives. Both battled suicidal thoughts and died unexpectedly.
But, though she wasn’t a model Catholic, O’Riordan never turned against the pope (she praised and even once performed for JPII) or her faith. It’s hard not to look at the contrast and find a reason for it in the loving support O’Riordan got from her intact family versus the fractured and dysfunctional circumstances of O’Connor’s early life.
Then there was the picture incident, yes. Some are now painting her as a prophetess—as if that episode, one of many in her off-mic career as a provocative scold, were anything but a lashing-out from her hurts.
But, then, maybe it was. There was an undeniable God-hauntedness to Sinéad O’Connor. The same nuns at her school for wayward girls who she says treated her badly also bought her a guitar and encouraged her gifts. They taught her the prayers and parables and Bible passages that would populate her song lyrics and inform her themes. As her trajectory swung between affection and revilement for her childhood faith, she repented of her criticism of the pope, then got herself “ordained” a priest in a schismatic Catholic outfit and released an album called Theology. Then she recanted her repentance, called the papacy “blasphemous,” and publicly dared Benedict XVI and Francis to excommunicate her.
Finally, she converted to Islam in 2018, calling the move the “natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian’s journey.” Referring to it, in fact, as a “reversion,” she seemed to buy in fully to the Muslim idea that, since Christianity is just corrupted Islam, deep down we’re all Muslims just waiting to realize it. (How she squared her infamously chauvinistic new religion with her lifelong criticism of “patriarchy,” I don’t know.)
Back to that album I bashed to pieces three decades ago. O’Connor began it with a prayer asking for serenity. For most of her life, it seemed there could be nothing farther from her. Perhaps we may yet hope that, by the ineffable richness of God’s mercy, she may still find it in the next life. Pope St. John Paul II, pray for us.