Thursday music corner: Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor, who died yesterday aged 56, was an outsider in the music scene who embraced contrarian activism and rejected the conformity of the pop stardom that was her due after the world-straddling success of her cover of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U in 1990. A troubled upbringing and lifelong struggles with mental health and substances affected her career, but her innate talent, fearless inventiveness and broad musical interests kept her work both relevant and challenging throughout her career. She released 10 studio albums over her career. In 2021 she published a successful memoir, Rememberings, and the following year Kathryn Ferguson's documentary Nothing Compares captured O'Connor's mercurial genius and her ambivalence to the trappings of fame. Film reviewer Peter Bradshaw wrote:
Above everything, O’Connor blasphemed against the ethos of success, a transgression which appalled the music world in 1992 as much as I suspect it would astonish the players of today. O’Connor had it all, she had stadium-level success within reach and threw it away by speaking out in ways that U2, say, would never dare.
Mandinka was the second single released from O'Connor's debut album, The Lion & the Cobra, in 1987. The song reached number 6 in Ireland, and hit the top 20 in the UK and New Zealand. At her last New Zealand performance in 2015, O'Connor couldn't finish performing her biggest hit because she was distracted by a duck quacking and dissolved into fits of laughter.
Sinead O'Connor - Mandinka (1987)
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