If they hated me, they will hate you*

What I learned from Sinéad O’Connor

When Sinéad O’Connor’s version of “Nothing Compares to You,” came out in 1990, we finally had cable at our house. That meant I could actually watch the music video on MTV. Before then, we had to stay up for Friday Night Videos, once a week, huddling in the dark, like some elicit feed from a foreign world entering out house out in the Kentucky countryside.

That we had cable still didn’t mean I could watch that video over and over again like you can now. But I clearly watched it often enough that the image is burned into my brain. This beautiful bald woman alone on a screen, singing one of the most heart-wrenching songs I’d ever heard. Just her face. Just her mouth. Just those eyes. Just that music.

I was lucky enough to come of age in a period of a lot of great women musicians. Madonna, of course. Tracy Chapman. The Indigo Girls. Melissa Etheridge. Cyndi Lauper. It’s a long list and they were all fantastic in their way. None of them were Sinéad.

Was I watching Saturday Night Live when she ripped up the picture of the Pope? Probably not. Did I absorb it into my skin the way we did pop culture back then, when there were only three networks (five if you counted the UHF channel and PBS)? I did. I could be bad? Daring? Angry? I could shave my hair off? That was possible? That was a thing?

The good, Midwestern girl inside of me was shocked. The part of me that wanted to ditch my small town and become some version of femininity I could only begin to imagine was fascinated.

The first Sinéad album I listened to intensely was “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.” I can still sing that whole album from beginning to end. Some days I do. There’s a certain mood I get in sometimes where the only thing I can listen to is, “This Is the Last Day of Our Acquaintance.” Nothing will satisfy except the soft start to that song, building and building until Sinead’s voice is a roar, “I’ll talk, but you won’t listen to me. I know your answer already.”

In that song, Sinéad taught me what it was to tell someone to fuck right off. To end it on your own terms. From Sinéad, I learned that racism was a thing in the United Kingdom, too. From Sinéad, I learned about how the English practiced and honed their colonial project on the Irish long before they spread it across the globe. From Sinéad, I learned about intersectionality long before I stepped onto a college campus. From Sinéad, I learned about feminism and Germaine Greer and that as women, we had a right to our rage, too.

Since her death yesterday, I’ve seen people refer to her as troubled and complicated and all the regular shit we use when someone doesn’t hide their full humanness from the world and especially if they’re a woman. She was just alive. That’s all. Alive and fearless. To be alive is painful and she didn’t hide that.

I read a post from

Lauren Hough

yesterday, describing how Sinéad would sometimes respond to people on Twitter. Thanking them. Reaching out. Hough wonders if Sinéad knew how much she meant to us. If she knew how grateful we were.

Sinead.

I missed my chance to say thank you. I feel bad about that. Sinéad seemed like a person who felt things so deeply and it’s hard for people like that to be on the planet. I wish she could have known how important she was. I wish we could all feel that. I wish we could hold onto that feeling as tight as we can in the hard moments, like a life preserver to get us through. I know it’s hard.

Sinéad O’Connor blasted into my life on a tiny TV screen when I was sixteen years old, like a voice in the wilderness. She left too soon.

*From “Black Boys on Mopeds”

Margaret Thatcher on TV
Shocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing
It seems strange that she should be offended
The same orders are given by her


I've said this before now
You said I was childish and you'll say it now
Remember what I told you:
If they hated me they will hate you


England's not the mythical land of Madame George and roses
It's the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds
And I love my boy and that's why I'm leaving
I don't want him to be aware that there's
Any such thing as grieving


Young mother down at Smithfield
5 am, looking for food for her kids
In her arms she holds three cold babies
And the first word that they learned was "please"


These are dangerous days
To say what you feel is to dig your own grave
Remember what I told you:
If you were of the world they would love you

England's not the mythical land of Madame George and roses
It's the home of police who kill blacks boys on mopeds
And I love my boy and that's why I'm leaving
I don't want him to be aware that there's
Any such thing as grieving