Sinead O’Connor has died aged just fifty-six years old.
The news broke yesterday, and police have since confirmed that she died at home in London and her death is not being treated as suspicious.
In the wake of her death, fellow musician Morrissey has ripped into people who are paying tribute to O’Connor in a lengthy statement.
O’Connor was best known for her music career. Her debut album The Lion and the Cobra was released when she was just twenty years old, and saw the Ireland native achieve chart success with its hits such as ‘Mandinka’ and ‘Troy’.
However, it was undoubtedly her 1990 cover of Prince’s The Family’s track ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ that saw O’Connor achieve international fame. The song became a worldwide hit, topping charts everywhere from the UK to the USA, Mexico, New Zealand and beyond.
Beyond her career, O’Connor was known for her protest and activism, talking openly about her religious journey, activism and mental health struggles throughout her years.
Tributes have poured in for the star, with Irish President Michael D Higgins praising her “authenticity” and “beautiful unique voice.”
“What Ireland has lost at such a relatively young age is one of our greatest and most gifted composers, songwriters and performers of recent decades, one who had a unique talent and extraordinary connection with her audience, all of whom held such love and warmth for her,” he said, via the BBC.
However, following the influx of tributes, Morrissey has hit out via his website at people who are paying tribute to the star “now ONLY because it is too late. You hadn’t the guts to support her when she was alive and she was looking for you.”
“She had only so much ‘self’ to give,” Morrissey said, via Consequence. “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 … and 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.”
He continued: “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! 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’, and 15 minute celebrities and goblins from hell and record labels of artificially aroused diversity are squeezing onto Twitter to twitter their jibber-jabber … when it was YOU who talked Sinead into giving up … because she refused to be labelled, and she was degraded, as those few who move the world are always degraded.”
“She was a challenge, and she couldn’t be boxed-up, and she had the courage to speak when everyone else stayed safely silent,” Morrissey added.
“She was harassed simply for being herself. Her eyes finally closed in search of a soul she could call her own.”
“As always, the lamestreamers miss the ringing point, and with locked jaws they return to the insultingly stupid ‘icon’ and ‘legend’ when last week words far more cruel and dismissive would have done.
“Tomorrow the fawning fops flip back to their online s***posts and their cosy Cancer Culture and their moral superiority and their obituaries of parroted vomit,” he concluded, “all of which will catch you lying on days like today … when Sinead doesn’t need your sterile slop.”
