It would be fair to say that I would not be the ideal person to write an obituary in respect of the singer Sinéad O’Connor, whose death was announced yesterday. Aside from her stellar cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U – unquestionably, one of the greatest cover versions of all time, a significant step up from the original (in my opinion) – I could not name another one of her songs. I know little about her life, either, a life which the Daily Mail – who else? – described as “troubled”. And so it appears to have been, particularly since the death of her son by suicide. The Mail’s reporting, which includes frequent references to her “mental health battles”, leaves little to the imagination in terms of how she died.
To be fair to the Mail – and trust me, I hate being fair to the Mail, which has had such a corrosive effect on the UK – it is not the only media outlet which refers to “mental health battles”. Much of the bone idle media drones on about a “cancer battle”, a “dementia battle” there, and all the rest of it, implying that the sick person could do something about it. if it isn’t a battle, or some kind of fight, it’s a journey but in reality these things aren’t battles and fights at all.
I have seen more media coverage of Ms O’Connor than I have heard her music and I get the impression that perhaps she has not always been presented in the most flattering light. And a ‘newspaper’ – if that’s the right word – like the Mail, with a predominantly older, female readership, holds far greater store in a woman’s appearance than it does about the person within. In being critical of the Mail, it is surely fair to suggest those who buy this wretched scandal sheet wholly endorse its worldview. They should be grateful, perhaps, that they’re not famous, too.
Being in the public eye ensured that when her son hanged himself in 2022, O’Connor’s face was plastered all over the media, not least at his funeral. Presumably, the red tops saw a level of public interest in publishing people’s private moments at what had to be one of the worst moments of her life. I must admit news of his death rather passed me by at the time, but having carried out some basic research for this blog, I would say that much of the coverage verged on intrusive, to say the least.
The words “rest in peace’ are being used constantly and I hope that, for once, people, especially journalists, actually mean it. The cynic in me knows that once the news has subsided the more cynical hacks will be trying to dig the dirt. As Don Henley put it so brilliantly in his song Dirty Laundry, “It’s interesting when people die.”
Oddly, I just feel sad about the death of someone I didn’t know and whose music I never listened to. Indeed, I’m happy I can still feel sad. It means that I still have a whiff of humanity about me.
