August 31, 2023 : Wondercab Mini (49A)
I feel like a surprising lot of us have found ourselves surprisingly shaken by the sublime Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor’s passing toward the end of this past July. Myself I can’t stop thinking about her, delving deep into her back catalog of videos and recordings, sifting through the tributes of others of her heartbroken fans, pondering details of her life largely unknown to me previously or else somehow forgotten (particularly her harrowing childhood, and the shimmering lifework she nevertheless managed to wrest from the wreckage), the haunted haunting crystal clarity of that voice, the haunting haunted deep-soulfulness of its witness.
Anyway, I thought I’d share with you here a trill of three videos in particular.
The first, an appearance by another fine Irish singer, Imelda May, on the Dublin version of the Late Late Show about six years ago, in which May recalled for the show’s host the first time she’d encountered O’Connor in the dressing room of her own show, about a year earlier:
YouTube being YouTube, it’s of course possible to summon up Sinead’s resultant appearance on Ms. May’s show, an impromptu duet between the two of them, covering Fats Domino’s 1950 blues classic, “Every Night Around This Time”:
And then, from just a few weeks ago, a passage from Ms. May’s appearance at last month’s Cambridge Folk Festival, in which her honoring of her suddenly fallen hero by way of a calling out of O’Connor’s own 1990 breakout cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2U” presently enlists a heartrending response from the wider audience :
Rest in peace, Sinéad, rest in peace.
See you next week!
That was lovely to read, thank you. I'll leave this here, in case you haven't read it. Her brother Joseph (brilliant Irish author) got her to write something for Dylan's birthday once, and I absolutely love how she went about it:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/post_b_866068?fbclid=IwAR1O7YzN3zxefCLLA3m-5wXHzxbX4paO8j_ajzFpXeeI_3v1S16MQExeCaA
It’s so curious why you say you pay tribute to Sinead, when three of the clips you post feature a not terribly interesting, albeit Irish singer named Imelda May; with really no reasoning as to why, and only one of the three have Sinead in them. They were pals, and that’s fine, but not enough of a reason or tribute imho. I love your posts, but as a composer and pro musician, I must protest at this one. Think about it, if you were suddenly gone, who might jump on the LW bandwagon and might claim to represent you or your aesthetic, but could miss the mark. If this Imelda is a friend and hurting, apologies in advance, but it does nothing to further Sinead legacy or understanding. Many non musicians mistake the “late night at the Apollo/histrionic school” of musicianship for music, but know that it rings hollow for true musicians.