Morrissey Slams Sinead O’Connor Tributes: ‘You Praise Her Now Only Because It Is Too Late’
In light of Sinead O’Connor’s death, Morrissey has published an impassioned blog post criticizing what he views as disingenuous tributes to the singer, who died Wednesday at the age of 56. The statement, shared through his official website, positions the reactions to the musician’s death as hypocritical copouts, reading: “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.”
Morrissey’s claims of not fitting refer largely to the public response to his alleged support of a white nationalist political party, among his other controversial stances that have aimed at immigrants, women, and Asian communities. This differs greatly from the backlash O’Connor received for stepping outside the traditional mainstream star lane to make bold public stances on child abuse, war, and organized religion.
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“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,” Morrissey wrote. “You praise her 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.”
The musician criticized the press and music executives for their response to O’Connor’s death. “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,;” he wrote. “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.”
In 1990, O’Connor refused to appear as a musical guest on an episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by misogynist comic Andrew Dice Clay. That same year, she stopped a New Jersey concert venue from playing the U.S. national anthem before a performance, which led certain radio stations to stop playing her music. In 1991, along with Public Enemy, she boycotted the Grammy Awards to protest the first Gulf War. And this all came before her infamous SNL performance of Bob Marley’s “War,” during which she shredded a photo of Pope John Paul II in protest of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Those acts, in many ways, derailed her career — but she didn’t view it in that light. “It’s not like I got up in the morning and said, ‘OK, now let’s start a new controversy,'” O’Connor told Rolling Stone in 1991. “I don’t do anything in order to cause trouble. It just so happens that what I do naturally causes trouble. And that’s fine with me. I’m proud to be a troublemaker.”
Still, Morrissey positioned O’Connor in a broader conversation about the public treatment of entertainers. “Why is ANYBODY surprised that Sinead O’Connor is dead? 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,” he wrote. “She was a challenge, and she couldn’t be boxed-up, and she had the courage to speak when everyone else stayed safely silent. 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.”
In the time since her death was announced, tributes have poured in from figures who saw O’Connor as influential and inspirational, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Tegan and Sara, Billy Corgan, Tori Amos, Massive Attack, Melissa Etheridge, and more.
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