Sinead O’Connor did not intimidate the church, but crippled the death of her son
[ad_1]
Last week, the artist who conquered the world with the image of an eternal child, a bald girl with an angelic face, Irish pop diva Sinead O’Connor, died. “ZD” mourns along with the entire musical world and understands what kind of creative legacy the 56-year-old performer of the hit Nothing Compares To You left behind.
Her main advantage, of course, is her powerful voice, which reflected the finest nuances of the artist’s emotional experiences. Plus, the incredible beauty, remembered by the public for the video for the aforementioned major hit. The video consisted mostly of the singing head of a beautiful short-haired girl alone. Sinead calmly withstood close-up shots, which has always been an indicator of strong acting talent. She was capable of frankness and let the camera get so close to her that it seemed that her huge eyes were taking the soul out of you.
“I always had the feeling that it was very important to protect yourself, to make yourself as unattractive as possible,” the singer later commented on her unfeminine and laconic style of clothing.
The girl was able to maintain her talent, despite the abuse of her mother, participation in street gangs and the hell of a religious correctional institution “Magdalene’s shelter”, where she was placed in her youth for stealing food from a supermarket. It is this tragic experience that will further push her to tear up a photograph of the Pope with accusations of cruelty and violence during a live television show. During a performance of Bob Marley’s anti-war song War, Sinead took out a photo of John Paul II and tore the photo at the word “devil”, adding: “Fight the real enemy.” Instead of music and applause, a dangerous silence spread through the hall, in which there was a single cry of “bravo!”. This step of hers will be perceived by the public extremely negatively, which will almost break her career in 92 …
But it won’t break, because during this period her creative romance with Peter Gabriel was in full swing, which she described in her book “Memories” also as a “traumatic experience”, but in public everything was very beautiful … By the way, the ill-fated shelters Magdalenas will be completely closed in the late 90s, when the remains of 155 murdered prisoners are found on the territory of one of them, and sexual violence in such institutions will be openly discussed.
In the early 80s, having barely left the penitentiary, Sinead did not hesitate to abandon boring school textbooks for the sake of a rock star career and only later received a special musical education. She was a person who is not afraid to look into the eyes of the whole world and says what she wants to say, and when she wants to.
In defiance of the London producers (with whom she got along after collaborating with the group In Tua Nua at the beginning of her career), she shaved her head and released the most rock album with a daring cover in 1987. In the first album, The Lion And The Cobra (Lion and Cobra), the future superstar showed art-rock, corresponding to her complex conflict nature. The music, seasoned with folk colors, felt the red-hot atmosphere and the exposed nerve of the Irish struggle for independence. Pop producers tried to comb the overly original singer, but she bared her teeth at both a lion and a cobra at the same time. The public greeted Sinead’s independent album with delight, it was so innovative and daring that now you can hear in it the beginnings of everything that then flourished in a stormy color in the 90s, with thick grunge (for example, the track Just Call Me Joe), which only later Kurt Cobain will “invent” for two years; with echoes of the hippie times of rock and roll ballads, with the beginnings of rock symphonies, which Radiohead would later rediscover.
The first album sounded like a personal revelation of a naked soul, which enters everyday life, ripping it open with a sharp knife of reality, without flirting and desire to please. The next album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, sounds more poppy, sometimes jazzy and even feminine. In the center of this disc, Prince’s old track Nothing Compares To You is spinning. She leaves the youthful groove for keyboard art, and the album becomes number one in 17 countries at once … It would seem that the singer has found her own style, but no, she continues to experiment and is fond of the music of bygone years. In 1992, she already released a whole album of retro-jazz songs Am I not Your Girl?
It was then that her “demarche” against the Catholic Church happened, which ended for her in almost blocking in the American media. But the “religious” issue deeply worried the singer, she now and then appeared in public in T-shirts with prints of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary. And later she completely pricked the image of Jesus right in the middle of her chest. One of the Christian sects even declared Sinead their pastor, so for some time the artist walked in the costume of a priest with a large cross on her chest and called herself Bernadette. The theological research of the singer ended with the fact that she completely left Catholicism and converted to Islam, changed her name to Shuhada Sadakat, but did not stop shaving her head. All this happened against the background of severe mental and physiological diseases, such as bipolar disorder and oncology. It is officially believed that she died of cancer, but many fans are sure that Sinead could not bear the grief after the death of her 17-year-old son Shane, who committed suicide a year and a half ago. The artist left two more adult sons and a daughter, all the children were born by her in different marriages.
Throughout her life, Sinead has veered from one musical style to another, from grunge to reggae, from fabulous classical orchestrations to Christmas carols (she has the 2012 single When a child is born in her repertoire). The last full-length record was the 2014 release I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss. The most American-sounding of her entire legacy, the disc accentuates even country music slightly, but retains the tenderness of her voice. On the cover, the artist is like a real pop star: very slender, in black latex and dark bob, hugging a shiny black guitar. The album is completely uninnovative, but powdered with peppery mothballs, stored up from the artist’s turbulent youth. Judging by the latest singles, despite all life’s difficulties and suffering, her voice has not lost strength over the years, but has gained a mature depth, with lower tones. She used it, as before, for piercing drawling songs about the most important things.
Newspaper headline:
Sinead O’Connor: A Lifetime Tragedy
[ad_2]
Source link
