The Surging News reporter Qian Lianshui
The fame of Irish singer Sinead O'Connor exploded in 1990. Not only did she release double-platinum-selling albums, but she was also thrust into the early 1990s on the cusp of the alternative music trend, quickly moving from an obscure Irish female musician to a super idol. She considers herself a protest singer, and she looks more like punk than Joan Baez, Patti Smith, janis Joplin. Being able to hear Sineed O'Connor's songs on mainstream radio and knowing that she is loved like a pop star inspires many people. Faye Wong has her shadow on her body, and Fiona Apple is influenced by her. She carved out a new path between female folk, rock and pop singers, gaining a broader mainstream influence than her predecessors, such as Fleetwood Mac's lead singer Stevie Knicks.
Two years later, during the livestream of Saturday Night, the hugely popular O'Connor sang an adaptation of Bob Marley's anti-racist song "War", took out a picture of Pope John Paul II without telling anyone beforehand, and tore it up at the camera. Thousands of viewers complained that phone calls poured into NBC to protest O'Connor's deviant behavior.
Did she know what she was doing at the time? Or, like many artists, obsessed with alcohol, drugs, emotional problems, childhood trauma, or unnamed hallucinations? In his just-published memoir, Rememberings, O'Connor writes, "Everybody wants to be a superstar, doesn't they?" But I'm a protest singer. I have something that must be expressed. I have no desire for fame. ”
Two weeks later, at a concert commemorating the 30th anniversary of Bob Dylan's debut, she was booed off. Madonna, who had stood up for her words and deeds, also condemned her actions. Years later, O'Connor apologized for his radical behavior, but did not waver in his original intentions for her. At the time, she believed that the Catholic Church had long been "tolerant" of child abuse.
Sinid O'Connor's career has been full of rough seas. But in the foreword to her memoir, the 54-year-old feels "the past two decades have been a rarity, and there are very few things to remember." "It was as if I wasn't there until six months ago. It's a book about a girl who finds herself— how she takes the opportunity to peel off the marbles from her body and finally play life like a fish after losing this armor. ”
Sinid O'Connor's Memoirs "Rememberings"
When O'Connor's music career began in the 1980s, the british record company executives could not foresee or would never make a bald female singer a star. Prior to signing with London label Ensign, Sineed O'Connor had already written and performed with the band In Tua Nua and performed in Dublin. She can play the guitar, she can write songs, she looks beautiful, and her eyes are clear olive green. Her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra (1987), brought her a Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Performance of 1989. Because the Grammys refused to televise rap performances, O'Connor sided with the protests with practical actions — she shaved the rap group's public enemy logo on stage on half of her head.
When the future is in sight, the label's leaders want her to grow her hair and dress herself up more beautifully. She immediately shaved her short hair into a slate and put on clothes that were far from the beauty of women at the top. She was pregnant. As the tour was imminent, Ensign called her obstetrician and asked her to persuade her to kill the child, because "it is incompetent for a mother to tour with her child or leave her child at home." O'Connor's first child was born. A few weeks later, her new album was released.
O'Connor knows a lot about incompetent mothers. At the age of nineteen, her mother died in a car accident. Irish law at the time did not favour divorce and denied the father's custody of his children. During his childhood, when his parents were separated, O'Connor and his siblings lived with their mother and were subjected to continued abuse. Meanwhile, their father became barrister and president of the Divorce Action Group, working to promote divorce and equal custody of their children by fathers, going on television and debating publicly with her mother, but to no avail. O'Connor's mother dragged her daughter out of the quagmire of stealing, and the mother and daughter even stole money from the church's donation box. She was sent to a Catholic youth correctional home, and her father was far away from her. One winter night, after being locked out of the house by their mother for a night with their siblings, they were finally sent to live with their father. Soon after, O'Connor entered a boarding school run by Catholic nuns. Grandma Margaret treated her well, taking her shopping at a store selling punk rock costumes, giving her guitar and Bob Dylan songbooks, and encouraging her to sing.
When he published Universal Mother in 1994, O'Connor revisited his relationship with his mother and the "unhappy woman" of his mother, trying to understand where a mother's cruelty to a woman comes from, the relationship between motherhood and human nature. Most importantly, in the song, she sang the words she wanted the most but could not hear from her mother and the love she received.
Now, she can write the chapter on her mother's death with short but precise strokes. She mentioned that the night before her mother's death, she chatted with her friends and imagined what it would be like if one of her parents died. The next day, the stepmother brought bad news, and the mother died in a car accident on the way to the church. The four of them went to their mother's room and put a cookie in the garden, which contained the stability that their mother had accumulated over the years. They lit a torch and burned the pills. O'Connor walked into his mother's room, and on the wall hung only one photograph — of Pope John Paul II's visit to Ireland in 1979. O'Connor took off the photograph and carried it with him from then on. She wanted to destroy the "photograph of a lie, a liar, and an abuser," but only had to wait for "the right time."
O'Connor's career also happened to something like a movie plot. Her cover of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2u" was a great success, and the prince received her at the mansion, advising her not to explode in public, ordering her to drink soup, and wanting to play pillow fights with her. The kindness of the seniors gradually became strange, and O'Connor did not want to drink soup and play pillow wars, but prince insisted. There is something very hard in the pillow, and the pillow fight will make people very painful. O'Connor escapes Prince's home and runs to the highway, where prince drives up to get her back. She fled into the driveway of a house and rang the doorbell for help.
When prince died, O'Connor did not pay tribute to the nobleman of the cause. She simply said coldly: "I already knew he was going to die of a drug overdose.". Having been an actress, being ungrateful, crossing a river and tearing down a bridge, winning attention, and not saying a word of good to someone dies, O'Connor knows what these comments will make you look like. But someone has to tell the truth and be honest with themselves.
Sinid O'Connor, who had converted several religions and wrote his memoirs, did not devote much to his musical career, ignoring the unknown path to fame that musicians often had to focus on, and not seeing this period as a miracle. She would rather spend her time examining her own life, documenting her four marriages, children, hysterectomy and psychiatric hospital, rather than revisiting the days of the superstars. "I define success as whether or not to abide by a contract with the Holy Spirit, not with a music company. I've never signed any contracts to promise to be a good girl. ”
The memoir is a letter she wrote to her father. "You know, even with St. Joseph's father and virgin Mary-like mother, growing up in 'Prairie Cottage' (a TV series from the seventies and eighties of the last century), I would still be as crazy as a fruit cake, as crazy as a diving bird (a bird that would suddenly make vibrato calls and laugh like wild laughs). So, don't try to kick the wall unless it's for fun. ”
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Liu Wei