Morrissey has a lot to say about the recent wave of tributes to the late Sinéad O’Connor. The Smith’s frontman called out members of the music industry and media for being disingenuous about their support for the Irish singer. Support they only showed after she passed away earlier this week.
He bluntly gave his scathing opinion on these tributes, in a way that only Morrissey could. “She had only so much ‘self’ to give,” he wrote on his website. “She was dropped by her label after selling 7 million albums for them. She became crazed, yes, but uninteresting, never. She had done nothing wrong. She had proud vulnerability”
O’Connor went from being a top-selling artist to being run out of the music industry basically overnight. Most blamed this on a controversial performance she gave on “Saturday Night Live” on October 3rd, 1992. After she finished singing a cover of Bob Marley’s “War,” she held up a photo of Pope John Paul II and tore it three times. She claimed she was abused by Catholic clergy as a child, and was protesting the church’s continual protection of priests who engaged in sex abuse towards children. “Fight the real enemy,” she said on “SNL,” before dropping the fragments to the ground and walking off stage.
This got her permanently banned from the show, as well as being dropped by labels, tours, and calls for boycotts of her music.
Morrisey takes issue with those who went after O’Connor in the 1990s, who are now praising her. “You hadn’t the guts to support her when she was alive and she was looking for you,” he wrote. “The press will label artists as pests because of what they withhold … and they would call Sinead sad, fat, shocking, insane … oh but not today!”
He also points out this is an issue all throughout the music industry. “There is a certain music industry hatred for singers who don’t ‘fit in’ (this I know only too well), and they are never praised until death – when, finally, they can’t answer back. The cruel playpen of fame gushes with praise for Sinead today … with the usual moronic labels of ‘icon’ and ‘legend.’ You praise her now ONLY because it is too late.”
While absolutely no one can deny O’Connor’s talent, her music and the way she presented herself were very different from the mainstream music of the time. Which is part of what makes her legacy to audiences so endearing. Unfortunately, the music industry has it’s formula, and she did not play along with them [another part of her appeal to fans]. “Music CEOs who had put on their most charming smile as they refused her for their roster are queuing-up to call her a ‘feminist icon.'”
The singer goes on to blame her untimely death on the machine that now claims to love her. “Why is ANYBODY surprised that Sinead O’Connor is dead?” Morrisey questions. “Who cared enough to save Judy Garland, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe, Billie Holiday? Where do you go when death can be the best outcome? Was this music madness worth Sinead’s life? No, it wasn’t.”
Concluding with a visceral, “Tomorrow the fawning fops flip back to their online shitposts and their cosy Cancer Culture and their moral superiority and their obituaries of parroted vomit … all of which will catch you lying on days like today … when Sinead doesn’t need your sterile slop.” We wish we could say that he is wrong.
Police have since gone on record to say there was nothing suspicious in her death. An autopsy is being conducted. O’Connor’s family have asked for privacy at this time.
